War of Peace
by GeneralSherman
Summary: A gala is being held at Versailles to celebrate the successful Omnic negotiations. With lasting peace finally near, Overwatch must infiltrate the party, discover Talon's devious plan, and put an end to it before it's too late and any hope of achieving the dream is shattered (Completed story. Also, first fanfic).
1. Chapter 1: Versailles

**Author's Note: This is my very first story, so I ask that you keep it in mind. This story is kind of near and dear to me as I've been developing it in my head pretty much since Overwatch came out.** **The general story was inspired by a combination of the high-class parties and galas that always seem to prevalent in spy fiction (e.g. James Bond) and the plainclothes fight scenes in movies like The Winter Soldier and Civil War (those two in particular).**

 **I hope you enjoy this and if you have any ideas for improvement, feel free to review.**

* * *

The first thing Jesse McCree felt as he came to was the pattering of rain on his hair.

As he regained a slightly better degree of consciousness, he also noticed that he had a splitting headache. His temples were throbbing incessantly, the back of his head felt like it had been thrown into a concrete wall, and his ears were ringing as though someone had just fired off a full clip from a machine gun three feet away.

He tried to reach up and rub his forehead to try to calm down the screaming pain receptors, but he soon found that his hands were securely handcuffed behind his back and moving one without bringing the other with it would be impossible. He next tried to stand up, an attempt rendered unsuccessful by the fact that he was dazed from this mysterious blow to the point where he could barely see.

Nothing here was particularly unusual for him; Waking up like this was something that came with the territory for a barfly and an outlaw such as himself. What was unusual, however, was that he was having a hard time remembering just what had led up to this blackout. All he remembered was that he had stepped outside of a very decorative-looking building for a smoke break, he'd heard a pair of guys talking not far away, and that he'd gotten a bit closer to eavesdrop on them. After that, it was straight blackness.

He strained his head up from his stomach-down position to try to get a look around, hoping that the brief period he'd been conscious for had cleared his vision enough that it wouldn't be too blurry. As his eyes refocused themselves, he saw through the dark curtain of rain and clouds that obscured what had once been a starry night. Before him was a long, deep row of intricately trimmed hedges in a massive garden courtyard, each one in the shape of some winged creature or a woman in a long robe. Behind them, off in the distance, was a seemingly endless row of city lights, arranged in tall, symmetrical rectangles, highlighted by a massive triangular tower strewn with lights from top to bottom at the very back of the row.

 _Paris_ , he remembered. The sights before him now opened the floodgates for all of what had happened leading up to his blackout. The events of the last thirty-six hours spread across his mind, jumbled up like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. As his disoriented mind slowly put the pieces back together and a sequence of events was recognized, he felt a sudden surge of fear and urgency: He had to get back inside the palace and warn everyone. NOW.

But before he could even start to pick himself up, two gargantuan arms appeared from behind him, wrapped themselves under his shoulders, and hoisted him up to his feet. He began to struggle in his captor's grip, hoping to wriggle his way to freedom, but this was cut short by a quick punch to the nose by a second aggressor which sent his head tilting backwards at high speed. As he brought his head back into position, his eyes refocused again and locked on the two men dressed as security personnel standing directly in front of him and armed with assault rifles. One of the men was short, somewhat pear-shaped, and had a thin face with a light brown duster on his upper lip, while the other was mid-height with a strong build and a round, clean-shaven face, but with a long, hooked nose and oversized ears. McCree knew these faces instantly and he couldn't help but chuckle.

"Well well, if it ain't 'Cobalt' Kowalski and the Lollipop Brigade." he said mockingly to the two men standing in front of him and the thug holding him in place. "I wouldn't a' guessed that I'd see some old Blackwatch trash here. Don't you guys have an old lady to trip or-"

McCree's snide comments were concluded by the long-nosed man punching him again. "Shut it, traitor!" he barked in a thick Lower New York accent. "You ain't in a position to make fun of us!"

"Um, yeah, about that; I kinda am." McCree replied calmly. "When you get a nickname 'cause ya drove yer mom's Cobalt to the base on the first day of work, it's right about guaranteed you're gonna get a few jokes pointed at-" Another punch from Kowalski connected, this one sending McCree's face rotating rapidly to the right. Along the tall walls of the palace, less than a hundred feet away, were bright lights refracting out of immense, ornate windows and an open doorway and casting their glow across the courtyard. His amusement with mocking Kowalski was replaced by a flash of urgency again.

"Well, kiddin' aside, I best be on my way. I kinda got a party I need to keep your boss from crashing; You know how it is." As the words left his mouth, he could see Kowalski and his pear-shaped friend crack a sneer, which soon turned into a smile, and then a snide laugh. This got McCree on edge; When the bad guys laughed like this, it was never a good thing.

"You stupid cowboy, the party's already been crashed. Every gussied-up can opener in there is dead and your little Overwatch buddies are about to follow them." Kowalski gloated through a wide, thin smile.

McCree knew right away that he wasn't lying as he backed away and snickered; guys like Kowalski never looked happy when they lied. Whatever self-confidence and condescension was left on the cowboy's face swiftly departed and was replaced with abject terror; If the Omnic guests were dead, then the peace agreement that the party was celebrating would be shattered. Dr. Zeigler and Genji's months of work would be undone instantly. All of Overwatch's planning and effort to protect it, gone in a flash.

Despite the grim thought, a small voice inside his head was calling out. It was urging him on, saying "I _t's not too late! You can get back there and save them! This is the chance to be a hero you've wanted for years!_ " His fear and hopelessness, upon hearing these thoughts of self-encouragement, were put on the back burner for now, replaced with a renewed sense of hope. He knew Talon had carried out their plan, but they hadn't counted on him being out of the line of fire. The time to turn things around was now and goddammit, Jesse McCree wasn't going to let it pass by!

Quickly, his eyes sped around, looking at his captors and the area around them. The outer wall of the palace was only a few feet behind the giant goon, close enough that stepping backwards would run him right into it. Not only that, but on the belt of the pear-shaped minion was the Peacekeeper, McCree's signature six-shooter. Almost immediately, he had formulated a plan. His eyes lingered on the gun for a moment, long enough that he knew Kowalski would see it.

"'Hey Tepesch, looks like McCree's found his hardware." Kowalski then removed the six-shooter from the belt and flipped it around so that he was holding it by the barrel and the grip was pointing at McCree. He closed the small distance between himself and his prisoner, locking his sickly green eyes on McCree's mud-brown eyes and stopping just over a foot away from the cowboy in his clutches. He raised his left hand high above his head, ready to bring it down any moment, and declared gleefully:"Oh, the irony. I am going to enjoy this a LOT.".

That's when the trapped outlaw sprung into action.

In an instant, McCree used the humongous arms under his shoulders as an anchor point, curled his back, lifted his legs so that they were at an equal level to his waist, and delivered a heavy two-leg kick to Kowalski's ribcage, sending him flat onto his back as Tepesch jumped backwards to avoid being caught up in the tumble. The force of the kick also sent the massive cronie holding the cowboy colliding with the wall behind them in a hard thud.

With the thug dazed, McCree delivered another kick, this time to the side of the shin on the immense thug's right leg, which was followed by a loud shatter. The goon howled out in pain as he raised his leg to relieve the pressure on the splintered bones. This allowed McCree to, by shifting his own weight and again using the huge arms that entrapped him, bring the both of them forward and send them to the ground, the goon's massive frame in front of his own. It came not a moment too soon.

"Shoot him, you idiot!" Kowalski screamed with what air hadn't been knocked out of his lungs. Tepesch opened fire with his assault rifle, but McCree's maneuvers had made the towering thug into an impromptu shield that absorbed every bullet sent its way. The pear-shaped man ran closer to grab a new angle, but not before McCree had slipped his arms under his tucked-in legs, allowing his cuffed hands a wider field of movement and the ability to fight back. The outlaw jumped over the still body of the large goon, lunged at his gun-toting attacker, slipped around him and choked him, using the energy chain of his handcuffs as a garrote.

Tepesch dropped the rifle and pulled out a small pulse pistol, firing it wildly behind his own head in the hopes that a lucky shot would find its mark. Instead, McCree saw it as an opportunity; He moved his hands forward, his metal left hand and the inside edge of the handcuffs where the chain met the shackle just at the edge of the pistol's barrel. In this position, one of the pistol's shots was sent directly into the irons, shattering it and freeing his hands. The moment after the shot had pierced the handcuffs, McCree brought his metal fist back towards Tepesch, striking him directly on the face and rendering him unconscious in an instant.

The more immediate threat removed, he whirled around to where Kowalski had made impact with the ground, only to see that the patch of ground's occupant was now standing up and pointing its own pistol at McCree at point-blank range. Before he could get off a shot, however, McCree grasped his left arm with his metal hand and snapped it like a toothpick. As he dropped his gun and yowled in pain, McCree's right delivered a punch that knocked the thug out cold and left his hooked nose a bloody, crumpled mess, something that three punches had been unable to do to the now-victorious gunslinger.

"Ain't never much been a fan of irony." McCree said to the unconscious man who had tried to kill him two seconds earlier. He then, reaching for the ground, picked up his Peacekeeper where it had been dropped after his first kick. The white, large-caliber pistol was a little dirty and rain-soaked, but otherwise in perfect working order. A quick check of the bullet chambers showed that the three idiots that now lay strewn on the ground hadn't even bothered to unload the gun after relieving it from their prisoner. He then placed it in the shoulder holster under the jacket he had on in place of his usual poncho and gun belt.

After using the mechanical strength of his prosthetic left to tear off the remaining shackle on his right, he turned his attention to the palace and began sprinting back alongside the wall to the entrance a hundred feet away. Placing two fingers from his right hand on a small earpiece, he frantically said into it:

"Winston, we were right. The Junkers were a red herring to lead us away from the rest of Reyes' guys. Talon's got an EMP and they're gonna set it off on the Omnics."

No response came, only static. "Winston, you there? Lena? Genji?! Fareeha! Anybody!"

Still no response, only the static and the sound of rain on the grass and the pavement. At that point, thunder rumbled off in the distance, and a flash of lightning could be seen shooting through the sky.

As he rapidly ascended the small set of steps leading to the doorway, rain pelting him as he ran, he nearly tripped over something small that seemed invisible. Looking back at where his foot had met the unseen object, he saw that it had indeed been invisible, but was revealing itself. The technological cloak that had previously shielded the object from sight frazzled, sparked, and then shorted out entirely to reveal a small, circular, purple-coloured object approximately one and a half feet long attached to the wall. On the display panel on the top of the device was an image of a pixelized, lavender-coloured sugar skull. Upon seeing the device, McCree felt another surge of fear; It was an EMP, Talon-designed, and worse still, it was activated.

"No." the gunslinger whispered. The feeling of dread grew inside him, but he didn't linger on it. The EMP was there, activated, and well beyond what McCree knew how to shut off, but something inside him told him that he had to see for himself just how bad things were inside the palace. As he reached the top of the steps and peered inside, what was confirmed looked like a scene straight out of his worst nightmares.

The doorway led to a massive ballroom, with ornate decorations, old mirrors, and priceless works of art covering nearly every inch of the gold-coloured walls. On the ceiling hung immense chandeliers, each fitted with dozens of lightbulbs where candles had once been centuries earlier. The open floor of the room had been filled up at the front with tables and a large stage with a microphone stand and a bigscreen display, while the back of the room was left open as a dance floor, accompanied by a small production stand fitted with chargers for remote control drone cameras at the very back. However, the room was now mostly empty except for the terrifying scene confronting him.

All of the human guests sitting in the tables were gone and left behind, slumped over in their chairs, were the metallic bodies of nearly two hundred Omnic dignitaries, each one periodically sparking and twitching with pulses from the EMP. On the stage, seven more Talon cronies dressed as security guards were holding assault rifles to the heads of Dr. Angela Zeigler and Lucio dos Santos. Standing out from even this awful scene, though, were two particular sights that made McCree's blood run cold.

Tracer was at the foot of the stage, sprawled stomach-down on the ground, her chronal accelerator sparking from the same pulses that had done in the Omnics. She desperately tried to stand up, but the high-heeled boot of Widowmaker came down on her lower back. The assassin then aimed her sniper rifle to Tracer's head as a cruel smile spread across her cold, thin lips. On the stage, Genji was in an almost identical position with his cybernetic supports weighing him down, only the Talon agent over him was armed with a semi-automatic shotgun in one hand, clad in black body armour and a hooded overcoat, and wearing a white spectre-like mask on his face. It was a thing that McCree knew far too well: Reaper.

McCree was frozen in place by the sight before his eyes. The dread that had gnawed at him now consumed him entirely, but only for a second. He'd never run from a fight before and there was no way in hell he was ever, EVER, going to let those bastards get away with this. He couldn't bring the Omnics back and there wasn't even a guarantee that he himself would survive this, but he was definitely going to take a few of them down with him. With this desperate courage fueling him, he drew his revolver, lined up a half-dozen targets, and let six shots ring across the room.


	2. Chapter 2: What It Could Be

_Thirty-six hours earlier..._

It was necessary, but that didn't mean it couldn't be enjoyable.

Watching newsfeeds was an integral part of Winston's daily routine; Every day he'd sit down in his tire-chair at the console in the control room of Watchpoint: Gibraltar with a jar of peanut butter on the desk, a banana in one hand, and scroll through the day's events. He'd liked doing this ever since he was an infant back on the Moon, where he would intake the goings-on of the blue ball outside his window as part of his daily schooling; He'd enjoyed it so much that he would even do it on his own time. Dr. Harold had once told him that the best way to change the world is to know just what exactly it was you are changing so you can make a plan of action that will work out. Winston had always tried to put the advice of his late mentor and surrogate father to good use, but nowadays it had even more meaning to him.

When he had re-initiated Overwatch, the gorilla scientist knew he'd have to take on a leadership role and shoulder more responsibility than just the scientific part he had played in the Golden Age. In the two years that had passed since the fateful day that he had sent out his broadcast on the emergency comms feed only an hour after having fended off Reaper's attack on his home and the agent database, watching the newsfeeds had become less the hobby it had been and more of a job, an obligation, especially since he hadn't been able to get Overwatch's old spy satellites up and running just yet.  
With the information from the news, he and the other agents, both new and old, could learn about crucial events and crises and formulate a plan on how to respond to them, even stop something or someone terrible before innocents could get hurt. It wasn't perfect, but it had been working well to this point. This responsibility didn't dampen Winston's enjoyment of the task, however. If anything, he liked it more now because unlike before, he could actually act on what he saw and change the world for the better, even if every government in the world wanted to arrest him for breaking the terms of the Petras Act.

The news and its significance, like the wind and the weather outside, varied greatly from day to day. This week had been rather slow: A new shopping district added onto Higher New York, a celebrity scandal, and the recall of the latest piece of integration software for self-piloting hovercars had been the most major things over the last few days. However, today was different in a very big way. Today, the newsfeeds were practically stumbling over themselves with what they were calling the biggest story since Omnics were first created. Winston pushed his glasses up his nose as they went past the screen one at a time.

" _In celebration of the success of the Omnic peace negotiations, a massive gala is being held at the palace of Versailles in Paris-"_

 _"Jubilant throngs of humans and Omnics celebrate in front of the negotiations office, and even more are expected tomorrow night at Versailles for the party-"_

 _"While the representatives for both the human and Omnic sides were unavailable for comment, it is all but guaranteed they will be on hand to celebrate their efforts-"_

 _"Dignitaries from over two hundred countries and representatives of countless international organizations such as the Red Cross, the Shambali, and even the U.N. are expected to be present at tomorrow night's soiree in Versailles-"_

Watching countless anchor-people and Omnics cover the story, he felt a swell of joy inside himself; The original Overwatch had been founded to bring peace to the Omnic Crisis that had ravaged the world over thirty years ago. They were successful in ending the war, but the battle to keep the peace had been an endless one. From the East China Sea's periodic bouts with the so-called "Kaiju Omnic" to the tensions in King's Row to their own worldwide trek against Null Sector's campaign of destruction, it seemed like successes in Omnic equality were few and far between.

This accord however, he knew, was going to be different. For months on end, politicians, advocates, and dignitaries from the four corners of the globe had participated in the negotiations and made their concerns heard before others. The dissenting voices Russia and King's Row and Null Sector's declarations of endless war had been a continual buzzing in everyone's ears, but in the end, for once, cooler heads prevailed. Many of the sessions had been televised, allowing Winston to watch them with ever-growing senses of pride and joy.

But today, those senses were interrupted by another, one that cut through him like a serrated knife. It was a distinct feeling of concern, rushing into the places that his hope and happiness had blanketed. Quickly realizing what had caused this unsettling feeling, he said to his computer:

"Athena, when was the last reported major Talon activity?"

"Three months, twelve days, four hours, and thirty-five minutes ago as of today. Since then, sightings of major Talon operatives and movements of known assets have been virtually nonexistent." was the reply.

Athena had been one of Winston's first creations, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence program whose one-of-a-kind software was based off of human brain patterns, allowing her to be faster, smarter, and process more information than any non-Omnic A.I ever built. She was specifically designed to be integrated into Overwatch's mainframes and perform almost any duty, be it security surveillance, communications, or any of the myriad goings-on of an Overwatch base back in the day. After Overwatch's disbanding, she was shut down and removed from their systems, but Winston reactivated her when he moved into Gibraltar. Since then, she had been his assistant, his confidant, and an invaluable help in reorganizing Overwatch, helping them to save lives, and keeping their locations a secret from Talon and the authorities, even if Winston did think she was a little overprotective at times.

He took a moment to ponder his concerns and her reply. It was strange, he thought, that Talon hadn't tried to intervene in the peace talks. If the past two years had shown anything, it was that the terrorist organization had been going to great lengths to disrupt, discourage, and destroy Omnic peace.

The current hotbed of violence and upheaval that had warranted the peace talks had been started after Widowmaker assassinated Tekartha Mondatta, the Omnic leader of the Shambali and a being some had called a modern-day Gandhi. Less than three weeks had passed before Null Sector, backed by Talon technology and funding, had launched an assault on the world's major cities what was quickly dubbed "The Second Omnic Crisis". Overwatch had taken them and their overseers on where they found them, but for every plan deduced, skirmish won, and city liberated, it seemed like there was always some detail they had missed that rendered their actions moot and allowed for their enemies' escape. The number of Pyrrhic victories had even been enough to drive Angela away again...

But, the gorilla figured, that was for another time. Talon was going to make a move here; He was sure of it. They had to or this summit stood to wipe clean every single mark they had made on the world.

"Combining the look on your face, the inspiration for your question, and recent news events, I believe I have deduced what you are thinking about doing," Athena said. "And I must tell you that if Talon has plans to disrupt the summit, Overwatch intervention will come at great risk. There is a possibility that they will anticipate our attempts to stop them, not to mention that an organized operation in a place full of people who wish to see Overwatch imprisoned could prove disastrous if we are recognized."

"I know." Winston replied with slight exasperation; the A.I. was being overprotective again. "But if we don't stop them, who else will? We'll figure this out and make sure that everything goes smoothly." His voice, by this point, had taken a reassuring tone.

"Very well. I only ask that you take care at all times." Athena answered after a short pause.

"I'll try. Call up all active members, visual feed if possible."

"Already doing so."

On the holoscreen, the newsfeeds were minimized in an instant, their talking heads and urgent stories going with them. In their place appeared the Overwatch Personnel Database, an immense archival record of every single Overwatch agent and employee over its existence. Pictures of people and Omnics, past and present, that had worked and associated with the organization were sifted through at lightning speed, with hundreds of names, pictures, and bios being called up to the screen and removed so fast that the naked eye almost couldn't keep up with them. After about five seconds of sorting, the database had found eight particular pictures and spread them across the screen like a deck of cards in a game of solitaire.

"Sending transmission requests." Athena announced. At this point, a sound line appeared underneath each of the eight pictures, while the pictures themselves changed to a small, blank square with the Overwatch logo in the middle that vibrated intermittently, similar to that of a telephone. The first screen to pick up was on the bottom row, the sound line making high, mountain-like peaks to indicate that the built-in microphone was working and the blank square disappearing in favour of a clear image. In the background was the living room of a mid-sized apartment, while in the foreground was the answerer of Winston's call, a blue-eyed woman with auburn hair wearing a bright red t-shirt and a jean jacket.

"Hello? Oh hello Winston! It's been a little while since you called. How're you doing? I hope that old base is still cozy enough for you." Her voice was a friendly alto with an Edinburgh accent.

"I'm doing well. I might have to fix the roof after the last rainstorm that went through here, but I'm doing well." This comment prompted a snicker from both ends of the feed.

Winston continued: "Is Lena home? I need to talk to her about something."

"Yeah, she's here. Just give me a moment to get her." It hadn't been even so much as a second after Emily had called out and said that Winston was on the phone when Tracer appeared in front of the screen in a flash of blue.

"Winston! Good to see you again, love! You caught me at just the right time." She said cheerfully as she blew a lock of her short but messy brunette hair off of her face. "I just got home from shopping for the groceries. I haven't even had the time to take off this thing!"

She pointed at her chronal accelerator, the white and blue device that she had to have strapped to her chest every time she left the house. The price had always been well worth it, though. Ever since the malfunction of a prototype teleporter on a fighter jet that she had been test-piloting, the accelerator that Winston had built to save her life had granted her total control over her own time. Tracer was able to "blink" in any direction with incredible speed and "rewind" herself out of danger in an instant. When she had first been inducted into Overwatch's active field rotation, some people had said it was the closest thing to genuine superpowers that they had ever seen.

Winston chuckled; he'd always enjoyed Tracer's bubbly energy and boundless optimism. "You know, you don't actually have to wear the accelerator everywhere you go. You can set it on area-of-effect mode, activate the miniaturize function, and carry it around in a purse."

"Sounds like a good idea, but I'll think I'll stick with this. I didn't know what half the buttons on here did even after I read the manual." Tracer laughed. "Besides, this makes going around London a sinch, even in rush hour."

"Believe it or not, it actually does. We've had the weekly shopping done in a little under twenty minutes before." Emily added in.

"Wow!" Winston exclaimed in near slack-jawed amazement. "To get around that fast, you must have been pushing the waveform replicator to over three thousand five hundred chronal divisions per-" Before he could continue, another one of the blank squares on the screen began showing an image. This one showed another apartment building, but it appeared to be in Numbani, judging by the buildings in the background. In the foreground was Lucio dos Santos, legendary Brazilian freedom fighter, music star, and recent joinee of the new Overwatch.

"He-hey, what's up guys? Been too long since I've seen you 'round! Tracer, ya speed demon, we still gotta have that rematch! I totally coulda beaten you from Greenwich to Stratford!" Lucio said with his usual showmanship-influenced upbeat tone.

"Don't worry, I'll go easy on you next time." Tracer bantered back. "Say, what's the fancy outfit for? You look like you're going off to the big party in Paris tomorrow night."

"Oh this?" the DJ said, gesturing to the tuxedo he had on in place of his usual jersey. "You just about got it right. Dunno if they said it on the news, but you're looking at the Master of Ceremonies for the whole thing! I've even been working on a special presentation that they're gonna do halfway through."

Winston and Tracer both offered their congratulations and applause for Lucio before another screen turned on, this time from inside what looked to be the cab of a large van.

"HELLO MY FRIENDS! I am overjoyed to see you all again! Lucio, I heard on the TV that you would be at the party! I am so happy for you! I have wanted to see peace like this for YEARS!" Reinhardt Wilhelm boomed from his end of the feed. The great German was so loud that Winston had to almost turn off the volume in order to get the sound to that of a normal talking voice. Just after, a woman's voice could be heard on Reinhardt's end and his head rotated to his left for a moment. Once his focus was back on the screen, he bellowed "Brigitte says hello as well!"

Tracer chuckled. "Good to see you too, big guy." she said while massaging her ears lightly.

Over the next half an hour, the rest of the calls were answered one by one and all the members of the new Overwatch were sharing stories and catching up with each other.  
Fareeha Amari had been at home tuning the small collection of guitars she'd played as a hobby from her army days; she answered the call while in the middle of a jam session that Lucio promptly joined in with using his hard-light DJ set.  
Torbjorn Lindholm answered his call from his workshop at home and immediately went into a grouchy rant directed at no one in particular about how he didn't like to be interrupted.  
Mei-Ling Zhou was at the summit of K2 gathering data for a paper she was writing on shifting wind patterns. The others asked if she would be attending the gala; While her data had been used by the climatology panel as part of the discussions, Mei herself hadn't been present for it, so she told them that she had declined.  
Jesse McCree was just getting off a twelve-hour flight that he'd spent stowed away in a commercial jet airliner in order to avoid being caught by the air marshal.  
Echo and Sojourn both answered on the same camera, but only long enough to apologize that they were in the taking care of a Null Sector contingent and that they were sorry they had to pass. Since their screen showed plasma shots whizzing past their heads as they spoke, no one blamed them. Offers were made to help them out, but they both assured the rest of the team they had it under control, wishing everyone good luck just before cutting their feed.

The last one to join the conversation was Genji Shimada. When the Japanese cyborg ninja's call was finally answered, showing himself inside his quarters at the Shambali monastery in Nepal, he didn't even have the time to breathe a single word before he was met with a chorus of cheers, applause, and whistles.

"You're the real hero here! Mondatta would be proud to see you now." Tracer said earnestly.

"Thank you, Lena. My master Zenyatta said the same thing to me earlier today." replied Genji.

"Congratulations. If I were there, I'd give you a medal." Fareeha said.

"You done good back there." McCree added in.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but you didn't do half bad talkin' with those Omnics, Genji." said Torbjorn gruffly.

"Hold the phone; Did Torbjorn just give a compliment?" Tracer asked, her eyes widening and her face taking an expression that combined surprise and laughter at once.

"I've never heard him do that." Mei said, bewildered.

"Dude, who are you and what've you done with the real Torbs? You like a Life-Model Decoy over there? I dunno guys, he sounds a bit Finnish to be the real deal." Lucio joked.

"For the last time, I'm SWEDISH!" Torbjorn shouted back. "And I wouldn't let it go to your head if I were you."

"It is alright. I am comfortable knowing I have acted on behalf of peace and that my actions honour those who care most about me." Genji replied solemnly.

"Speaking of which," Winston interjected. "Would you be able to get in touch with Angela? I heard she was representing the Red Cross at the gala."

" _YA_! She deserves our congratulations as much as you do!" Reinhardt declared.

"I actually have an announcement to tell you all." Genji replied. His voice was less clear than usual, now coloured somewhat by nervousness, but he adopted a confident stance and continued onward. "I recently asked Dr. Zeigler if she would be my date to the gala and..."

Genji paused for a moment, his eyes showing his nervousness again. The rest of Overwatch looked on with growing anticipation. Tracer in particular was on the edge of her seat; she'd been trying to talk Genji into asking Angela out for years, knowing their history together and having been a confidant for both of them during the Golden Age, when Angela could only keep her feelings to herself due to the Hippocratic Oath and he had seen himself as too damaged to ever find happiness. Now, with Genji having found his peace and him being Angela's patient no longer, Tracer had hoped that they'd give each other a chance as something more.

Genji took a prosthetic hand to his forehead and wiped a bead of sweat off. Taking a deep breath, he continued on. "...she accepted."

The revelation was met with another chorus of cheers and applause.

"I knew you could do it!" Tracer congratulated, giving Genji a thumbs-up.

"Thank you, Lena. We have also been preparing a speech together that we will give during the ceremonies." he replied.

"That sounds great! I'm beginning to wish I had accepted my invitation after all." Mei said.

"I'd actually like to see you two there as well." Fareeha added.

"Actually, that's kind of the reason why I asked about Angela." Winston cut in. "In fact, it's the reason why I called all of you today."

The gorilla scientist's serious tone caught the attention of all the cast present. Their elation at the recent developments was paused like a film and their looks of joy turned to ones of concern.

Winston continued on. "Null Sector's still active, but we haven't seen or heard anything from Talon in over three months now. They haven't been this quiet since, well, ever. Athena and I assume that they're planning something huge to have gone this covert, but we don't know what; it could be a bomb or an EMP or a hostage situation or something else entirely. I know it's something we've never really tried before, but I propose that we do an undercover mission into the gala at Versailles, discover Talon's plan, and put a stop to it before they can undermine the peace treaty."

The de facto leader of the motley group's words held resonance among them. Though his inexperience was evident, his resolve was as true as anything Jack Morrison had said in a speech during the Golden Age.

"Makes sense." McCree chimed in first. "With Genji and the doc at the party, Reyes'll be itching to show up and crash it."

"Sounds like something Widowmaker would try to get into as well." added Tracer.

"We can't go in unprepared; there's too much at stake. I've got an idea on what we could do, but I was hoping to hear your ideas as well." urged Winston.

"Of course! I will make sure that Talon's dastardly hands are not laid on anyone ever again!" Reinhardt exclaimed.

"Actually, not everyone will be able to go; too large a group would attract too much attention."

"Oh... alright then." Reinhardt frowned, his enthusiasm dampening slightly. It wasn't too long before he was back to his old self again, however. "But we will still defeat those despicable enemies with HONOUR and GLORY!"

"I'm going to need you all to do an emergency transport here as soon as possible so we can go over the details. I'll see you all soon." Winston said. His words were met with approval and one by one, the images all turned to black again and the sound lines cut from their high peaks to perfectly flat once again. All of them, except one.

"Genji, before you go, are you sure that you can get Angela to help out? I don't think we can do this without her." Winston stated.

"I am not sure." the cyborg ninja answered. "She is still bitter about the frustrations of the old days. After the last negotiations ended, she said to me that 'the last remnants of the old Overwatch had been swept away'."

"I need you to try, please. This could mean saving thousands of lives. I'll even help you if you'd like me to."

"Your generous offer is accepted, my friend. I will contact you again soon." After that, Genji's image disappeared.

Winston sat back on the tire that served as his chair and sighed. As he stretched out his arms and legs, he looked up at the headboard just above the screen to the row of pictures that were held onto the edge with thumbtacks. His eyes were drawn to the picture in the very middle, one that showed an infant Winston alongside Dr. Harold, both smiling happily.

Fond memories raced through Winston's mind of his time with the lunar scientist before coming to a stop on a familiar one. He could still hear his father's voice on the day that the then-young ape was first shown the colony's observatory. " _Never accept the world as it appears to be._ " Dr. Harold had said. " _Dare to see it for what it could be_."

The words echoed through Winston's mind as he reached up and grasped the picture with his index finger and thumb. He said softly to the image "Thank you." before heading off to his workshop in the main room below to await the arrival of his friends.


	3. Chapter 3: One Helluva Night

The next thirty-two hours passed rapidly; there was a lot to do.

Just as Winston had requested, the entire roster of the reformed Overwatch had congregated at Gibraltar by the end of the day. From there on in, it was all business. It was quickly decided that the three best choices to infiltrate the gala would be Tracer, McCree, and Fareeha; The latter two had tactical training that it was agreed would be beneficial (especially in McCree's case) and Tracer's powers with her accelerator would allow for an instant response when Talon's plan was discovered.

Winston himself kept his word to Genji as well. Not long after the cyborg ninja arrived, the two of them got in touch with Angela, who was taking a short coffee break at her not-for-profit clinic in Oasis. Genji had been right when he'd said she was bitter, but Winston had initially thought he'd been overstating it; it didn't take him long to realize Genji, if anything, had said the least.

"So I guess that you think that you'll just swoop in, punch everything that points a gun at you, and be carried off victorious on the shoulders of the dignitaries, yes?" Angela remarked, her vitriol thinly veiled by sarcasm.

Winston stuttered for a moment, taken aback slightly by her uncharacteristic attitude, before collecting his thoughts. "Uh, no, no. Not at all. The whole reason why we need to be at Versailles is so that we can save lives."

"Of course. It's _always_ been 'to save lives', but have you ever considered that there just may be innocent lives that will be taken when the shooting starts?" Angela replied bitterly.

"I've got a plan for that. We could really use your help on it and who knows, maybe you'll-"

"Maybe I'll what? Rejoin a team that couldn't see past its own nose for twenty years and let good people die because of it?!" Angela snapped. At this point, she realized that her temper, which had rarely been seen until these past couple of years, was beginning to boil over. Taking a moment to recompose herself, she crossed one arm over her stomach, placed her free hand on her temple, and looked down at her feet.

"I'm sorry." she said, though her words had more of a self-defensive tone to them than a regretful one. "I've just... I've just moved on from Overwatch. All my life, I've seen people say they were going to save lives, but when the fighting started..." She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Genji could see that she was stifling tears back.

"Dr. Ziegler, I know that this will be hard, but I have faith that we can keep the peace we have worked on together." he said to try to comfort her.

Angela looked up at the screen in front of her and saw her former patient's face. Even under his silver faceplate and his eyes obscured by his green-glowing visor, she knew he was looking upon her with compassion.

"This is a chance to save lives that would otherwise be destroyed. After tonight, the war between humans and Omnics will no longer hurt anyone." He paused for a moment as Angela's sad bitterness slowly began to fade, lightening up as his words echoed through her head.

"Besides, who would be my date to the gala if you din't go?".

A smile spread across Angela's face. "All right, I guess I owe you that much." she chuckled. She then turned to look at Winston, her expression stoic. "Just please, promise me that no one will die." she said with a tone coloured by a pain that cut deep through her.

"I promise." Winston replied.

* * *

Over the next day, the team made countless preparations. Surveillance was key for the mission; with Talon's game for the event unknown, they would need to keep on alert at all times and see what was happening all across the palace and the grounds at all times. With that in mind, it was agreed that Tracer and McCree would go undercover as a remote camera crew televising the gala on behalf of an independent news network. From a control panel in the back of the main ballroom that most of the gala would take place in, the two of them would have control over a half-dozen camera drones, which would buzz around wherever the main crowd was to keep an eye on anything suspicious.

Appearances were another crucial aspect of the mission. McCree was an international fugitive with a bounty on his head that rivaled that of even the two Australian Junkers that had been rampaging across the globe again. Tracer, while not wanted, had had to keep her head down around King's Row and rely on Winston to cover her tracks ever since her sighting at the museum in Numbani. Genji, Lucio, and Faheera had been a little more inconspicuous with regards to their taking up arms in the renewed effort and Angela wasn't even a member, so coming out of the night without being linked to an organization that was deemed internationally criminal was a prime objective. After a spirited shopping trip to London that McCree nearly turned into a pub crawl, Tracer had managed to find herself and the cowboy outfits that would suit their undercover purposes. She would be wearing a pair of khakis and a powder-blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, while he had acquired a pair of boot-cut jeans, a white t-shirt, and a Miami Vice-style jacket that served to conceal his revolver and a shoulder holster. Lucio went with the tuxedo that the team had seen him in earlier, while Genji and Angela opted for save the reveal of their attire for the night itself.

Fareeha's role would be external reconnaissance; recent developments to expand Paris' economy meant that there were several buildings directly on the edge of the palace grounds. From the rooftops, she would be able to do a continual circle around the perimeter, looking for any sort of movement like a hawk scanning a wheat field for a mouse, a task made almost easy thanks to several sensor upgrades made to her suit by Torbjorn.

In the end, however, they knew Talon's target was going to be the dignitaries, so this is where the most intensive planning would be. As such, Winston and Athena would be remotely watching over the drone feed as well, providing extra sets of eyes from afar. Overall, the role of the infiltrators was to be a largely passive one. Due to Overwatch's position as an illegal organization, they couldn't afford to be seen together at a secure event whose guest list contained a long list of politicians and high-ranking military personnel.

Finally, it was determined that Angela, Genji, and Lucio, though they would all be able to easily access their combat gear if the need arose, would attend the event as usual, acting as though they had no idea of any sort of plot or of Overwatch's presence. This served not only to help keep the crowd calm and to potentially lure out any Talon operatives into the open, but also to hide their Plan B in plain sight. Angela had had the idea that she would keep a small clutch with her at the event. Tucked away inside would be a collapsible miniature version of her Caduceus Staff. Should any or even all of the guests be killed or injured, she would activate it, allowing for her to save them from a potentially damning fate.

* * *

At last, after over a day of strategizing and preparing, the zero hour finally came and the team arrived early to make crucial preparations. Fareeha, in her battle-tested Raptora Mk. VI suit, immediately took up her perimeter sweep, using the suit's rocket boosters to float from the top of one building to the next, surveying the area for a few minutes, and then repeating the process. Lucio, as the M.C., went to rehearsing his script for the night and doing some last-minute tweaks to the musical presentation he had prepared for halfway through.

Tracer and McCree, meanwhile, got to the process of readying the camera drones. Each of the repulsor-lifted, dinner plate-sized devices were virtually silent, could be controlled at an range of up to four hundred yards, and carried a remote camera on their underside. They were propped up on small, pole-shaped battery chargers, which by the time Winston had walked the camera's users through how to install the control panel had fed enough life into the cameras and the drones to last long past the length of the event. When the drones lifted off and glided their way across the ballroom, the cameras themselves were activated, providing a crisp image of everything they surveyed.

"You getting these pictures, Winston?" Tracer inquired. As she said this, she reached into a duffel bag identical to that which the drones had come out of, her hand withdrawing from it her chronal accelerator.

"Yup, and it looks like everything's been set up perfectly." the gorilla replied from his chair at Gibraltar's main computer.

Tracer then, with the push of a button, changed the image on Winston's screen to her and McCree standing behind their panel. "Just one last thing though: How did you say I could miniaturize this thing?" She held up the accelerator in front of the panel for the gorilla to see on his screen back in Gibraltar.

Winston let out an frustrated sigh. "For the last time, you need to turn the outer cover counter-clockwise thirty degrees, push it inward, and then press the button at the southeast corner of the center-"

Tracer laughed. "Just kidding, love. I got it the first time." A second later, the accelerator's outer covering of hard plastic and fiberglass had receded into the area between the chest and backpieces, cutting the diameter in half. She placed it underneath the table that the control panel rested on, an opaque covering that draped over the edge keeping the device from sight.

"Heads up: Guests are coming in. You might want to get the cameras out front." came Fareeha's voice, calm and commanding.

The two sprung into action immediately, and with a few button pushes and the gentle usage of the joystick, the drones' electric eyes gave an uninhibited view of the scene out front the gates of Versailles.

* * *

The scene was abuzz with activity. Leading up to the gates was a long red carpet, unfurled and serving as a pathway into the palace's immaculate confines. Velvet ropes guarded by security personnel lined the carpet all the way up to the main gates, restraining the immense crowd of journalists and elated celebrators, each one attempting to make their questions and cheers heard above all others.

The weather for this pivotal night had been mostly cooperative. The ambient temperature was warm and a full moon illuminated everything within its gaze. The gold decorations of the gates reflected its radiance upon the red carpet and those walking it, giving them a shimmering glow. Off to the east, however, a bank of dark clouds could be just seen hanging over the horizon. The air, while warm in the vicinity of the palace, had a small breeze that carried a sharp, piercing chill around with it.

At the beginning of the red carpet, a long line of limousines were lining up one after the other as though it were a train pulling into a station. A small army of doormen and valets, both human and Omnic, stood at the ready to park the vehicles and receive the guests. As each vehicle glided up to the entrance, out stepped their esteemed contents: A veritable who's-who of celebrities, politicians, dignitaries, military personnel, and representatives of over a hundred major organizations and corporate entities.

As the arrivals continued, a P.A. system suddenly made its activation known. The crowd collectively craned their heads to see where the noise was coming from.

In French, a deep bass voice began to speak. "Ladies and gentlemen, we would now like to present our guests of honour: the negotiators who have made the celebration tonight possible through their work and commitment to peace."

The crowd erupted into a collective cheer as the next limousine came to a halt at the red carpet and the door to the passenger compartment opened.

"Our first arrivals, who are here on behalf of the Shambali and the Red Cross, respectively, are Genji Shimada and Dr. Angela Zeigler, MD and Ph.D."

Out stepped Genji first, who was wearing a black silk robe with a silver dragon emblazoned on the shoulders. Fastened to his belt on the right side were his short sword and katana. The outfit, when combined with his faceplate, helmet, tall figure, and the iridescent green glow coming from the long, thin eye slit of his visor, gave him an air of regality and dignity.

Genji then turned back in the direction of the limousine's open door and extended his left hand. In a single fluid motion, Angela's hand met his as he stepped to one side, allowing her to elegantly remove herself from the vehicle and stand on the carpet. Her dress was immaculate: A shoulder-less white evening gown, inspired by those worn by old movie stars, that glistened under the moonlight and sparkled as journalists turned their camera's attention to her. Her hands wore white elbow-length gloves and her platinum blonde hair, usually held back in a ponytail, was let down to her shoulders where it curled at the ends. Back at the control panel, Tracer gasped and clasped her hands together in front of her chest in excitement for her friend, while McCree raised an eyebrow and quietly whistled as his pupils fixated on Angela's image coming from the camera drones.

Genji was thankful that the crowd was fixated on Angela's stunning beauty, because the mere sight of her left him feeling as though he was about to lose control over his faculties and fall to the ground in a pool of jelly. It didn't take long, however, to bring himself back to his senses.

"You look wonderful, Genji." Angela whispered as they walked through the gates.

"And you look l-li-lik-like a..." He wanted to say she looked like an angel, but his tongue seemed to lose all coherence as he looked into her shimmering blue eyes.

Angela chuckled. "It's OK, just say what comes to your mind."

Genji inhaled deeply and mustered all the courage he had inside himself. After a few moments, he said softly to her "You look as beautiful as ever."

Angela lightly placed a hand over her mouth as she blushed. "Thank you." she replied, almost smitten.

With all the courage he could muster, Genji offered her an arm, tucking his hand close to his chest to hide that it was shaking. Angela graciously accepted and the two strode down the red carpet, turning every head in view of them.

As they walked through the open doors of the palace, Angela planted a soft kiss on his cheek, leaving behind a small stain of ruby lipstick. Internally, he struggled to keep himself from hyperventilating.

The entrance led them to a grand open room, with centuries-old artwork on the walls and the glint of gold coming from every angle. Above them, ornate chandeliers broadcast their radiant light throughout the room, which reflected off the countless decorative mirrors and made the room look even larger and brighter than it was. Genji and Angela were awestruck with the spectacular sight of it as they made their way towards the ballroom, but there was one crucial detail that they missed as they strolled through the palace's corridors.

In the left corner of the entrance room, just concealed by the open doors in an area where the light did not quite reach, stood a haunting figure. Her legs were impossibly long, almost spider-like in their appearance. She wore a deep purple sleveless dress of fine silk, detailed impeccably with a subtle pattern of black lilies and cut just above where her nylon stockings ended, and on her wrists and upper arm hung ornate golden bands. Her face was blanketed by pale makeup, creating an eerie trio alongside her long raven hair and thin, icy lips.  
Her most chilling feature, however, was her eyes. Already an unnatural shade of dusty brown, they were permanently fixed in a stare that seemed to penetrate through to one's very soul and yet had nothing behind themselves: No heart, no emotion, no soul of their own. Overall, she had the look of someone beautiful, but twisted by someone or something, her beauty combined with something truly evil.

The woman raised two fingers to her left ear, turning on her comlink. Her voice was a musky, French-accented purr as unfeeling as everything else about her. "The guests of honour have arrived."

* * *

On a rooftop on the opposite side of where Fareeha's patrol had her, a thick black mist swept in from out of nowhere before coming to a halt at the edge of the roof, overlooking the gates to the palace. The mist slowly turned in a corkscrew pattern upward before dissipating, leaving in its place a revenant, a ghost bent on revenge and destruction: the Reaper.

Ten feet to the left of where he stood, a scraggly destitute took notice of him. Holding out a small plastic cup, the tramp asked the dark figure in front of him " _S'il vous plait, monsieur? As-tu de l'argent?"_

Reaper's only acknowledgement of the vagrant's existence was to draw a shotgun and fire a single round that took his head clean off and made the lifeless body step back a few feet before crumpling like a ragdoll into a corner. As he returned the shotgun to its holster underneath his overcoat, he placed two fingers on his hood where his right ear would be and spoke with a raspy growl. "Good. Keep an eye out for any other Overwatch agents. The doctor and her pet won't be here alone."

"Affirmative. Widowmaker out." she replied.

Reaper then pressed his earpiece again, opening up a new channel. "Kowalski, are your men in position?"

"We got 'security guards' on patrol around the building and covering the interior. When you make the call, those schmucks at the party won't have nowhere to go." Kowalski replied smugly.

"Drop the attitude. If something goes wrong, I'll be holding you accountable. Now keep radio chatter down until the next check-in. " Reaper admonished.

"Yes sir, boss." Kowalski meekly answered.

Reaper closed the channel and peered down at the gates from his perch. Limousines continued to stream in and dignitaries continued to make their way inside the palace, camera drones capturing their every step and people and Omnics jostling for position to sing their praises or snap a photo. Each and every one of the dignitaries was despicable, arrogant, and self-entitled, standing in the way of the world's true direction and deserving of every painful second of their fate. At least, that's what the powers that be thought.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out two people strolling through a corridor lined by gigantic windows. Though they were mere specks in the distance, the lights surrounding the palace illuminated them clearly. Through the eyes of his mask, he could clearly make out in the window that the two figures were Genji and Angela, strolling through the palace and taking in its spectacle.

Reaper curled his right hand into a tight fist. He didn't give a damn about the peace talks, the gala, the Grand Design, or anything of the sort. Overwatch and its reformation, however, was different. Like Montresor, he claimed a thousand injuries and insults done against himself and like Edmond Dantes, he had worked for decades to destroy those who had wronged him. A deal with the original Doomfist, The Saviour, had set in motion a twenty-year undermining of Overwatch, right under their noses. In the end, he had come tantalizingly close to completing it, only to have it stolen from his deserving hands by a select few members of Overwatch and, most infuriatingly, by the man who had done him the greatest insult of all: Jack Morrison.

Ever since then, closing this matter was his singular obsession, and with the power he had at his disposal it was almost too easy. Still, regardless of ease, Overwatch agents were Overwatch agents. They needed to die. ALL of them.

"Are you just going to stand there and brood all night? If you are then fine, I'll just complete the mission myself then. It'll go a lot smoother, that's for certain." a voice from out of thin air interrupted. Its tone was mocking, condescending, and featured a Mexican accent.

Reaper seethed in anger and slowly cranked his head to his right. Two feet away, a lavender outline of a woman in a cyberpunk jacket materialized and was filled in, revealing Sombra as the source of the voice. Reaper tightened his fist to the point where his hand shook and the metal claws at the end of his gauntlet-ed fingers dug into what little flesh was left. Ever since Sombra had first been assigned to work with him in Paraguay in the final months of the Golden Age, he had known her to be a royal pain in the ass. Though her hacking skills and enhancements made her competent, she was flippant, cocky, unprofessional, and sarcastic, never passing up on an opportunity to annoy himself and Widowmaker, fly in the face of their authority and greater experience, and flaunt her self-proclaimed cleverness, even though her extra-curricular "friend-making" wasn't quite as unseen as she had thought. Worst of all, Doomfist knew about her attitude and independence and still gave her a long leash, a slap in the face to his professionalism almost as intolerable as any Overwatch had thrown at him.

"I don't have time for this." he said, aggravated by Sombra's mere presence.

"Ooh, are we a little touchy tonight, Gabe? Not even a hello for your _mejor amiga_? Even by your standards that's edgy." she bantered, knowing she had struck a nerve.

In an instant, Reaper whirled around and snatched the collar of her jacket, wrenching it and pulling her close enough to him that she could see into the black voids that filled the place where his eyes should have been. Through the open area under the pointed line around the nose area that evoked the image of a skeleton's nose, his words seemed to give a ghostly echo. "Don't. Test. Me."

Despite the intimidating move he'd made, Sombra's attitude was unchanged. "Yeah, I get it; you're under a lot of pressure, you don't want to make yourself look _estupido_ in front of what could be half of Overwatch, and you've got the boss breathing down your neck. I'm sure it would get to anyone, especially if they had your kind of baggage to carry around on top of it."

She stared into his soulless eyes with a look that dared him to retaliate. Reaper wrenched her jacket collar even tighter, but it did nothing to faze her. After a few more seconds, he relinquished his grip, pushing her backwards in the process. She stumbled back a few feet, but caught herself without any trouble.

Reaper turned back towards the gates, clasping his hands tightly behind his back so that they wouldn't reach back out and violently throttle the Mexican irritant. The last of the dignitaries were exiting their limousines, braving the mass surrounding the entrance, and promenading down the red carpet to the confines of the palace. "You'd better have the EMP ready." he snarled.

"Oh ye of little faith, Gabe." Sombra replied as a cocky grin spread across her face. From a coat pocket, she produced a purple cylindrical device about a foot and a half long with three small spikes at one end. Pressing a button, the display panel on the top created an image of a pixelized lavender sugar skull.

Reaper didn't bother to look. If there was one thing he could say about Sombra that wasn't dripping with contempt, it was that she didn't slack on the technological aspects of the job. "And what about the hired assets?"

" _La rata y el puerco?_ Practically begging to be let loose. They were giddy when I told them their job."

"Keep them in line until I give the word. Once their part is done, let me know immediately. In the meantime, set the EMP. Don't activate it until everything's ready."

She gave a confident smile in return and a mocking salute before the lavender outline that had accompanied her arrival did the same for her disappearance.

By now, the limousines had come and gone, the dignitaries had all gone inside, and security was guarding the doors, making sure the multitudes couldn't pour inside as well. As Reaper dissipated back into the mist, what Sombra had said came to mind; If she was right and half of Overwatch had indeed showed up, this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to clear some names off the list. At the notion, he felt a growing feeling of murderous anticipation.

This was going to be one helluva night, and nothing could stop him this time.


	4. Chapter 4: The Night's Still Young

The party began without a hitch.

Over the course of the next twenty to thirty minutes, the dignitaries streamed into the ballroom one by one and took their seats. Angela and Genji were both seated near the stage at a table reserved just for them, a move that had been prepared so that Tracer and McCree's camera drones could keep watch on them and Lucio at the same time.

After everyone had been seated, Winston spoke out over the teams' comm channels. "OK everyone, this is it. We can do this if we keep it together and don't let our guard down. Can I get a last-minute check from everyone?"

"Feed from the drones is still good." McCree said.

'It's the same back here in Gibraltar. You did a good job setting them up." Winston replied.

"Well we had an expert to help us with that." Tracer added. Her remark made Winston feel a sense of pride.

From outside on the buildings at the palace's perimeter, Fareeha reported in. "It's pretty normal out here. The crowd's still at the gate trying to get a closer look and the stage in the gardens is crawling with technicians. I'll keep on doing a sweep and alert you as soon as I see something."

"Lucio, Angela, and Genji are on radio silence, so we're just about to begin. I'll be checking in again in an hour or so." Winston said. He paused and took a long, slow breath. When he spoke again, his tone was quiet, but hopeful. "Good luck everyone." The channel then fell silent.

The lights in the ballroom dimmed and the deep, French-speaking voice on the PA system from earlier came to life. "Esteemed dignitaries, your Master of Ceremonies for the night. Please give a warm welcome to Lucio dos Santos."

As the voice stopped talking, the curtains on the stage drew back and Lucio strode out, a spotlight following him from stage left to the mic stand. The dignitaries gave their applause as he stopped and adjusted the mic.

"So how's everybody doing tonight? I don't know about you guys, but I'm looking at the hors d'oeuvres and thinking 'Dude, cheese and wine? Way to point out we're in Paris. I think the Eiffel Tower already gave us the idea'."

The crowd's first laughter of the night was light, but Lucio played off it. "I mean, at least Brazil has unpronounceable berries and nuts that they name countries after, y'know what I'm saying?"

This follow-up joke was better received, which allowed him to further capitalize.

"Thank you, thank you. Don't worry, I'll get to the rest of you later; England I'm looking at you. Moving on, so, thank you all for coming out. Before we go any further, I'm gonna set down the ground rule that I promise I won't shamelessly plug my newest album-" His voice purposefully sped up for comedic effect. "- _comingoutthisSeptemberandavailableforholorecordingamonthearly_."

The dignitaries all laughed again as Lucio took a bow, his dreadlocks drooping over his head. After he recomposed himself, he calmed down the crowd with the raise of a hand and continued speaking.

"Thank you, thank you. Now, let's get serious for a moment. What're we all here for?" The crowd was silent for a few seconds before Lucio answered his own question.

"We're here because we all believe in a dream, 'cause we all want to see the day where everybody, Omnic and human, can stand side by side without worrying if someone is going to try to hurt them simply for existing. It's a dream I think is worth fighting for; Whaddaya think?"

Everyone in the room cheered, clapped, and whistled. Lucio spread his arms out wide and gestured as though to say 'I can't hear you', prompting greater applause. When the cheers died down ten seconds after, he continued his speech.

"Well, I dunno about you guys, but I think that judging by the fact that we're here right now, the dream we all share is finally coming true!" More cheers erupted from the humans and Omnics in the building as Lucio took another bow.

"OK, so we got about an hour to ease ourselves in, get to know each other outside a summit hall, we even got a dance floor to kick it on and don't worry, it's all yours. Same time they'll be serving up a five-star dinner as well and since it's Paris, you know it's gonna be good." he said, each word injected with a spark of up-tempo showmanship. "After that, I'm inviting all o' y'all out to the gardens where I got a special something I put together just for the occasion. No spoilers, but it's gonna be epic! Once that's done we'll be back in here and capping off the night with a few words from some of the heroes who made this all possible."

Lucio stepped back for a moment as the room gave him a standing ovation. He spread his arms wide and took in the applause, feeling the wave of ecstasy that the positive reception gave him. His eyes quickly moved around the room; at the very front, Angela and Genji were part of the standing ovation. At the very back, Tracer was whistling loudly in excitement while McCree made the gesture of tipping a hat, even though he wasn't wearing one.

Lucio stepped back forward to the mic stand as the applause began to soften. "Y'all start things off right and I'll be meeting up with you in a couple hours. Don't go too crazy without me; The night's still young!" With the audience applauding him again, Lucio dropped the mic and moonwalked off the stage as the curtains drew closed and the lights raised.

Over the next hour, the ballroom was alive with activity. Dignitaries and honoured guests exchanged pleasantries and broke bread, some of the more adventurous (and inebriated) attendees tried their moves on the dance floor, and servers maneuvered through the crowds with glasses of fine wine, plates of hors d'oeuvres, and gourmet dishes of various delectable entrees. The glittering decorations on the walls and ceiling served to illuminate the room, giving it and everyone inside an air of decorum. Through a skylight in the ceiling, the moon and the stars cast their light upon the people and Omnics inside.

As the night progressed and this portion drew near the end, the last few dignitaries who had been wary to ply their skills, real or perceived, on the dance floor, took to getting in their moves while they still could. As the last music began to play and the dancers paired up, Genji was content to stay on the sidelines, conversing with Angela's colleagues and keeping an eye out for the trouble that Tracer and McCree's camera drones were also trying to pick up. His intentions, however, were overridden when Angela grabbed his hand and spirited the two of them over to the dance floor.

"Dr. Zeigler, Angela, I am not sure about this." he said warily.

"Oh but Genji, do you hear what they're playing? It's Strauss, they're practically asking for us to dance." she replied, an excited anticipation marking her voice.

Genji froze in place, trying to find the words that would get him out of this situation. "But, I... I do not know how to dance, and I am unsure that even if I learned, I would be any good at it."

Angela was still energetic. "You'll love it, I'm sure. The waltz is meant to be easy to learn. I'll even lead until you get the hang of it."

Genji tried to refute her, but instead found himself standing awkwardly in front of his date as words failed him. After a few seconds of trying to say something, anything, he hung his head and sighed in resignation. When he finally gathered himself enough to speak again, the only words that he could muster were "Very well".

" _Wunderbar_! You needn't worry, Genji. Soon you'll be having the time of your life, I promise." Angela replied as she led them through the crowd surrounding the dancers.

While the cyborg ninja and the doctor took the floor, Tracer and McCree were focused on the job at hand. Thus far the drones hadn't found anything suspicious, but that wasn't to say that there wasn't anything to find at all. Even the smallest slip-up or oversight had the potential for disastrous consequences, so diligence was key at all times, no matter how little seemed to be happening.

"Move Camera Two over to the west end and focus in on the group by the door?" Tracer asked to her colleague.

"Already on it." McCree responded. With the press of a button on the control panel and the slight movement of a joystick, the associated drone glided silently and effortlessly through the air before easing to a halt above a small congregation of dignitaries, all of whom were oblivious to the flying piece of plastic and wiring floating a few feet over their heads.

"You see anyone there? I'm not recognizin' any familiar faces." McCree inquired over his earpiece.

"Athena's not picking up any Talon agents on the facial scanner." Winston answered. "We'll just have to keep looking. There has to be someone here."

"Makes sense. Large area, lots of people spread around, plenty a' idle time. No one'd be expecting anything to happen."

"Except for us." Tracer chimed in. "The mixer's almost over and we haven't found anything yet. You think it's possible they got scared off?"

McCree shot a skeptical look at her. "I figure I know Reyes better than just about anyone. He'll be here, even if he's not goin' to be shootin' things up just yet. He could even be tryin' to scope us out like what we're doing right now." he said with a tone that almost seemed to indicate that her question had unsettled him.

"If he was, are you sure we wouldn't have seen it by now? I don't remember Reyes being that subtle." Tracer replied. She was asking a genuine question, but her tone was inflicted with a challenge.

"He fooled the world for twenty years. Not like you'd be any harder."

"That's enough from both of you." Winston interjected firmly. "Arguing isn't going to get us any closer to stopping Talon. If anything, it gets us further away from it, so you two need to keep your heads in the game."

Both McCree and Tracer lightened their expressions and retreated from their hostile stances before apologizing first to Winston, then to each other.

"Guess I was just eager to finish the job fast." Tracer explained.

"Yeah, I was kinda expecting a little more action tonight too." the cowboy replied before turning back to his camera monitor.

Tracer lingered on his last words for a bit. They had provoked a variety of feelings in her, as if her words and her thoughts didn't entirely align. Though Lucio's opening speech, written with his usual flair, was quite entertaining, and the importance of her job was very much in mind, the follow-up of watching the crowd mix and mingle through the electronic eyes of camera drones was slow by her standards. Memories flashed through her mind, clear and fresh as though they had only just happened. Right from the beginning, she had been eager to move forward, live life in the fast lane, and look out for number one; it had been her driving force through flight school, through the RAF's training, and had inspired her to join Overwatch's test pilot program. The desire for a speedy way forward and a high-octane life had taken her to the top, until that one fateful day.

It had been nearly ten years since the Slipstream's malfunction, which would have cost her her life had it not been for the quick thinking of her friends, some untested science, and a lot of luck. Until then her life had been filled with gambles and close shaves; it came with the territory of growing up in the dodgy parts of King's Row. The accident, however, was different, a nearly impossible gambit that had raised the stakes higher than before. Even thinking about it now sent a twitch of fear running down her spine and into her extremities, and looking down at the accelerator, the anchor on life that she relied upon, placed between her feet heightened the sensation. If it were to malfunction or be damaged, she'd float off into the oblivion that lay underneath the cracks of time itself.

But for how tenuous her grip was, she'd always found herself appreciating the outlook it gave her. The accident had taught her that she wasn't invincible, she couldn't come out clean on the other side every time, and lucky breaks weren't nearly as common as she'd thought they were. This new perspective put her life in a slower gear, even though, figuratively and literally, she could now go faster than ever before. Joining up with Overwatch's field agent duty, turning what was originally a short fling into a long-term commitment with Emily, and forming her closest bonds with people like Angela and Winston had all been products of this new outlook on life. Slow moments, which at one point had been practically intolerable, were now savoured; she never knew if or when it could all end.

After a few seconds had passed, she closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and exhaled slowly. Her mind cleared, she turned her chair towards the monitors and resumed her work. Only a few fleeting minutes later, McCree called something to her attention.

"Take a look at this, Lena. On Cam Three. Nothin' serious, just somethin' I think you'd like to see." he said to her in a manner that indicated he knew she'd like what she saw.

Curious as to just what McCree was hinting at, she brought up Camera Three's feed on her screen and what she saw just about melted her heart. The dance floor was empty except for Angela and Genji, closely embraced and waltzing lively across the floor to the music. Despite his initial protests to the contrary, Genji was proving quite adept, his mechanical feet hitting every mark with seeming ease and gracefully matching Angela's every step. A crowd had formed around the couple, each pair of eyes watching in awe.

Through the monitor, Tracer could see that though Angela was leading, Genji was just about ready to take over. As the music grew to a brief peak, the two of them slowed their dance to match the slower tempo. Tracer saw Angela draw closer to her dance partner, her legs brushing against Genji's robe, and whisper something in his ear. Though the drones couldn't pick up just what it was she had said to the cyborg ninja, Tracer knew it had to be either something encouraging or, hopefully, something steamy.

When the tempo began to increase again, the dance did as well. Tracer hoped to high heaven that the young sparrow would take flight with his long-admired angel, and with a spin and a dip as the melody reached a crescendo, he did. The collected dignitaries all showed their surprise with a chorus of oohs and aahs and a spirited applause as the dance picked up again. Tracer herself, barely able to contain her excitement and laughing with joy, jumped up from her chair so she could view the spectacle with her own eyes. Looking down from the control pedestal on the dance floor, a feeling of euphoria shot through her. After years of quiet admiration, the sparrow with a broken wing, the tortured soul who had thought he could never have a future with his perfect angel, had spread his wings wide and was soaring through the heavens, just as Tracer had heard him dream of all those years ago.

Likewise, Angela, the first one out of them all to see what was hidden underneath Genji's cold, metallic exterior, was on a cloud. Tracer had seen that in recent years, a weight had been on the former Overwatch medic, and she had strained to keep herself above it and not sink down into its depths. Tonight, Tracer could see, it was gone. Free from the weight, Angela was almost floating as she danced, each spin and each step showing an energy, an optimism, a hope that had been unnaturally scarce.

At last, the melody neared its conclusion. Tracer, still giddy over the performance, could see Angela whisper one last thing into Genji's ear before their waltz picked up again, in sync with the increased tempo of the music's finale. With an elegant flourish and and a rapid pirouette, their dance concluded with the couple standing side by side, hand in hand. As the congregated dignitaries erupted into applause and cheers, Genji turned towards his angel, his heart still racing from the exhilaration, and took a bow. Angela, breathing heavily and fueled by adrenaline and ecstasy, gave her dance partner a graceful curtsy before grabbing his collar and pulling him in close for a passionate embrace and a soft kiss on his faceplate where his lips would have been.

Up in the control centre, Tracer saw the romantic scene unfold, and she was providing the most elated applause of all. At long last, it seemed that her friends had finally found each other. On top of that, she thought, what better way to exemplify the future that this party was celebrating? It all seemed like everything was coming together, that everyone was going to get a happy ending and that the hope that Overwatch had been reformed for was finally going to win out.

As Genji and Angela walked off the dance floor, still hand in hand, and the crowd's volume softened as regular chit-chat resumed, Tracer surveyed the crowd just as she was about to sit down, enjoying the warm feeling that the past few minutes had given her.

Until she saw a face that turned that warm feeling to ice.

It was only out of the corner of Tracer's eye at first and she almost didn't think twice of it, but as she rotated her head slightly to the right to get a clearer look, it was unmistakable. A woman in a silk dress pattered with black lilies, standing in the midst of one of the larger gatherings that had broken off of the dance floor's collection. She wasn't conversing with anyone, only watching, listening, occasionally turning to observe her surroundings. Her face had features that Tracer could recognize even from the fifty foot distance that separated the two; Long raven hair, icy thin lips, her face blanketed by ghostly pale makeup, and soulless, dusty brown eyes fixed in a stare that cut through to the core of anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the terrible web that was her gaze.

"Oh no." Tracer mouthed, fearing that if she even so much as whispered, the person she saw would hear her over the combined voices of four hundred dignitaries making conversation. Her pulse quickened, her eyes widened to the size of oranges, and her forehead began to drip beads of sweat. Her mind spontaneously raced through a series of bad memories; the feeling that her lungs were on fire as she inadvertently dashed through a cloud of purple gas, an accented purr of the woman's voice coldly saying "S _uch a sweet, foolish girl_ ", her utter shock and horror at seeing Tekartha Mondatta's lifeless husk collapse onto the cobblestones of King's Row, the whisper of " _Adieu, cheri_ " in her ear just before the stabbing pain of the accelerator being crushed against a brick wall. Each and every one of these details was vivid in Tracer's mind as she looked at the woman responsible for it all.

But something within her said otherwise. _It can't be._ she thought. _If she were going to do something, she'd have done it by now. Not only that, but she's a sniper, so she wouldn't be down here. Unless..._ Her train of thought was cut short as the woman turned in her direction, her eyes nearly making contact with Tracer's before she could dive down into her seat and put the control panel between herself and the woman's line of sight. With desperate, driven speed, she whisked a camera drone into position and zoomed its electronic eye in on the eerie figure.

"Winston, I've got someone on Camera Three for you to ID. It looks like Widowmaker's invited herself to the party." she said urgently over her earpiece.

Winston's response was immediate and almost frantic. "Widowmaker? In the crowd? How did we not see her earlier?"

"I don't know. I just spotted her a second ago while I was watching Angela and Genji dance." Tracer explained.

"You just say is here who I think you said?" McCree interjected, leaning in to get a closer look at the picture on Tracer's monitor. As he surveyed the image, his brow furrowed and his teeth clenched, hardening his expression.

"She's right, too. The facial scanner just confirmed it. Looks like Talon's here after all." Winston replied.

There was a brief pause in the conversation as everyone stared at the screen, looking at the face of Talon's most lethal operative. The air seemed to crackle with tension as the three of them came to terms with what they were seeing.

Tracer was the first one to speak up. "So, what do you think we should do?"

At this point, the PA system sounded again. "Esteemed dignitaries, you are now asked to make your way to the gardens along the east side of the palace. The presentation is about to begin."

The security guards stationed outside the doors at either end of the ballroom stepped inside and began ushering the collected guests out the doors, filing them through one by one in a calm and collected manner.

"For now, we'll need to just keep waiting. Fareeha, the dignitaries are headed out to Lucio's stage. You'll need to be in position to keep an extra close eye on them." Winston said in response to Tracer's question.

Over the intercom, Tracer and McCree could hear Fareeha's reply. "I can see them heading outside now and I'm on my way."

"But couldn't we nab Widow while everyone's busy and try interrogating her? There has to be a reason why she's not outside in a sniper position." Tracer inquired.

"There's sure as hell a reason, but Talon assets ain't keen on giving up details, no matter how much you lean in on 'em." McCree answered, his tone subtly indicating that this piece of information was something he'd rather not know as well as he did.

"As well, it looks like she's staying in the middle of the crowd. She's probably expecting us to try and make a move soon." Winston added. "Though you do have a point, Lena; it doesn't make much sense that a sniper be up close and personal unless it's part of a larger scheme." The gorilla scientist's voice had assumed a strong, commanding resonance. "I want you to suit up and patrol outside with Fareeha when Lucio's show is going on. This could be a critical moment of the night. McCree, you'll stay here and man the camera drones, keep looking for anything suspicious. Also, try to keep the drones inconspicuous around Widowmaker. If we let on that we've recognized her, it could jeopardize everything."

"Don't you remember? Inconspicuous is my middle name." the cowboy replied jokingly.

Tracer chuckled as she retrieved her accelerator from underneath the table. "I thought your middle name was David."

"Well that just don't sound quite as good, now don't it?"

"Whatever you say." Tracer smiled cheekily.

After mentally running through Winston's instructions on miniaturizing the accelerator in reverse, Tracer strapped the fiberglass and plastic device onto her upper body. Despite its relative size, it was lightweight as so not to fatigue its wearer after extended periods and not slow her down, which would take away her greatest tactical advantage. As the harness was pulled taut, the center piece of the accelerator intensified from a low vibration to a steady hum and brightened to a baby-blue colouration. Afterwards, she reached into one of the duffel bags situated behind their seats and strapped on the wrist-mounted holsters for her pulse pistols, flipping the weapons in and out a few times to make sure that they were working properly. By this time, the cavalcade of dignitaries had exited the ballroom and was strolling out onto the palace grounds to take their seats for Lucio's presentation.

"Happy trails." McCree sent off to Tracer, who returned the sentiment before snapping on her speed-augmented goggles and zipping off in a flash of blue, leaving the cowboy to send the drones floating off after the dignitaries.


	5. Chapter 5: Unfinished

If Widowmaker could feel, she would have felt that the gala was terribly boring.

All she saw around her in the gilded, historic halls of Versailles on the way to the gardens was polite conversation, pomp and ceremony, and grand-scale politicking. Each dignitary, to her, was the same: Human or Omnic, cocktail dress or three piece suit, English, French, German, Japanese, or any of the bevy of languages being spoken, these were all just meaningless details to her. It all had no impact on her, didn't make her feel anything.

Internally, she cursed Reaper for charging her with this role in the plan. While she was ever the loyal servant to Talon's machinations, the triviality of the gala was beneath her, and it could go to hell for all she cared. She preferred a much more exhilarating scenario, one that played in her mind with intimate detail:

 _She stands on an open rooftop. high above the streets. The night masks her position and a brisk breeze whistles through her long ponytail and breaks against her cheeks like waves on a rock. In the crosshairs of her sniper rifle stands an unsuspecting target. Though the distance is great, she knows she can easily reach out and touch them with her icy hand. As her multi-eyed mechanical headdress closes over her eyes, she can see every angle, but the target and her attention remains front and center. Her stiff expression loosens and a thin, satisfied smile spreads across her face as she wraps her finger around the trigger and sends a bullet downrange. The bullet having found its mark, the target crumbles to the ground, their eyes glazing over and their limbs ragdoll-ing in uncontrolled directions_.

A warm tinge trickled down her spine. All at once all the cold, all the loathing, it just melted away into beautiful, addictive emotion, a high that she'd chased every day for the past ten years.

It was cut short as quickly as it began by a sharp whine of static in her earpiece, followed by Reaper's raspy growl.

"Report in." he barked to her.

Widowmaker uttered an expletive in her native tongue under her breath as the feeling faded and her frigid stoicism returned. "The plan is proceeding on schedule. Dinner was quiet. They will be expecting us to make a move during the show."

"Good. Were you able to identify who the monkey sent over?"

"Aside from _la docteur et sa petit copain_ , I have spotted McCree and _la_ _fille naïve_ operating camera drones."

Reaper snarled viciously; McCree and Tracer were the two most consistently annoying thorns in the sides of himself and Widowmaker. That is, of course, aside from Sombra.

"One of their new recruits is here as well, as the Master of Ceremonies. The musician from Brazil." she continued.

"He won't be a problem." Reaper stated bluntly. "What about the camera drones? Did they see you?"

"At first they overlooked me, but I was spotted by the girl a few minutes ago, before the room was cleared. I assume I will have their attention for the next hour?"

"They probably think you're handling someone; It explains why you're not on the rooftops. You'll also need to know that Kowalski reported in before you did, said one of his men spotted someone floating around on the perimeter. I don't need to ask if you know what that means."

"Ana's little girl." Widowmaker purred with a combination of detest and anticipation. "She will be looking for saboteurs or gunmen, which she will find if Sombra decides to be timely."

"Sombra's given the word to the Junkers to get going, so the second phase is in motion; they'd better not screw it up. From here on in, you know what to do. Keep a low profile until the final speech, then give the signal. Once the EMP goes off, pick your targets, but Angela, Genji, and McCree are _mine_." With that, the connection on his end turned to static.

Widowmaker switched off her earpiece and sniffed derisively; Reaper was making things personal again. If there was one major problem that she had with the shadowy killer, it was that he put too much into settling old vendettas. _Still_ , she thought, _if Gabriel is going to act as a revenant on this night, it could provide... opportunities_. The idea of finally putting a bullet through the skull of that peppy nuisance Tracer entertained her thoughts, and the notion of doing the same to the daughter of her old foe Ana Amari added further temptation to it. Two such kills in one night, she thought, would certainly slake her lust for feeling.

By now, the dignitaries had arrived at the gardens and taken their seats in front of where a massive stage, similar to the one inside the ballroom, had been constructed. However, unlike the stage inside, this one had a great emphasis placed on several subwoofers on either side, hooked into a DJ set at the back of the stage that was tucked in between a pair of large TV screens. Several of the guests admired the size and spectacle of it, but Widowmaker had nothing of the sort on her mind.

The warm tinge running down her spine had returned, and she was taking full advantage of it. Under closed eyelids, she visualized the sight of Tracer underfoot, desperately trying to crawl away as the barrel of her sniper rifle is pressed against the British brat's head and the trigger is pulled. The ecstasy of such a kill, she knew, would be unmatched, and the thought of it brought new images to the forefront, chiefly one of a kind-faced man lying in bed next to her, his warmth radiating her way, giving her a sense of safety, comfort, love. Feelings that, without death to sustain them, faded into nothingness as quickly as they arose. The image of the man morphed with the fleeting emotions, finally twisting into that of a lonely, snow-covered headstone, decorated with a single blood-red rose. The grey marker overlooking the plot of frozen ground was simply titled "Gerard Lacroix".

 _Oui_ , Widowmaker thought as she opened her eyes and once again resumed her cold persona. _I believe I can indulge in Gabriel's 'unfinished business' for tonight_.

* * *

"It's getting kinda cold up here, don't you think?" Tracer said to Fareeha as they stood on a rooftop overlooking the stage.

Down below the two of them, the show was well underway, Lucio in full performing swing at the helm of a high-tech DJ set, creating electronic beats, riffs, and melodies to accompany the visual aspect. While Lucio's set was at the back of the stage, the immense screens displayed brilliant images of colour that changed according to the tempo and mood of the music, as well as numerous murals and pictures done in several different art styles from throughout history. These displays served as an accompaniment to the extravaganza on the center of the stage.

For the dignitaries in attendance and the camera drones to see was a wordless play, a pantomime with each character being created by hard-light projectors attached to the beams overhead. The scenes being shown were a sequence, a timeline of the history of human-Omnic relations stretching across a span of thirty-plus years, shown through music, colour, and light. Each milestone was shown with dignity, grace, poetic style, and tone reflective of the real-life event; In the opening scenes, an overall feeling of triumph and hope was expressed as the creation of the first Omnics was shown. In later scenes involving the Omnic Crisis, the colours on the screens had turned to darker tones, and a thin curtain had been used to create silhouettes of war-torn battlefields and blend together the soldiers who had marched on them.

"The wind's definitely picking up, and it's a bit stiff." Fareeha responded. As she raised her head upwards as she surveyed the crowd, she glanced upwards at the bank of clouds that was drawing closer. "The sky looks pretty mean as well."

"Maybe I should've brought an umbrella." Tracer remarked.

"You probably wouldn't need it. It won't reach us. Even if I'm wrong, we'll have picked up Widowmaker and whoever she's with by the time it comes in."

"That's why I'm up here. The two of us versus whatever Talon's got in store? I pity those poor bastards."

The two of them chuckled at Tracer's quip for a moment. Afterwards, there was a short lull in the conversation.

Tracer was the one to break the silence. "How do you do it?"

Fareeha slowly looked over at her. Underneath her suit's beak-like helmet, her face took on an appearance of confusion. "Excuse me?"

"How do you make weather talk of all things not sound awkward? It's pretty much the go-to subject for when there's nothing else to talk about and you somehow make it not sound like nails on a chalkboard." Tracer explained.

"Really?" Fareeha responded, surprised by this regarding of what she saw as the poster child for mundane. She paused for a moment to take off her helmet and brush her jet-black hair off to one side. A smile crept up on one side of her face. "I guess that's something I got from Dad. Ever since I was little, he's said that the only predictable thing about Canadian weather is that it's completely unpredictable. Because of it, it's practically the subject of choice for small talk across the country. Well, that and hockey." she laughed.

Tracer snorted with amusement. "And I thought Britain had nasty weather." She looked back out over the crowd; they all seemed to be enjoying Lucio's show immensely. About an hour had passed since the show had began and it had been pretty quiet since then. Still, the threat was imminent, and her and Faheera couldn't let up.

"Move to the next building?" Tracer asked.

"Great minds think alike."

A blink and a rocket boost later, they had a new angle on the performance. Tracer looked over at Fareeha inquisitively.

"I never met your dad. Seems like he's quite the person." she said as she found a seat along the edge of the roof and criss-crossed her legs.

Fareeha's face lit up with a combination of fondness and longing. Her tight, military grip on her rocket launcher loosened as she slung the weapon over her shoulder. "Yeah, he is. We didn't spend much time together when I was little; Mum got custody when they split up and Canada and Egypt aren't exactly close by. They were always on good terms, but the only real times I saw him for any length were on holidays and the occasional visit during tours of service." She briefly paused and took a knee next to Tracer on the roof's edge. "You know, the first time I got deployed to Canada, they sent me off to CFB Comox for joint exercises with the RCAF and guess who was there?"

Tracer stopped for a moment to ponder the question before it hit her. "Really? Sounds like quite the coincidence."

"He was the base commander at the time and once he'd found out who was getting deployed for the joint exercises they were doing, he'd gone out of his way to make sure I didn't know because he wanted to surprise me. After a week of drills and maneuvers, I was about to turn in for the night before we left for Cairo in the morning when I was delivered a hand-written invitation to dinner in the base commander's quarters. Now, I still didn't know who the base commander was by this point, so I was thinking 'Why is this happening? Who is this person? There's got to be a reason for this, right?' I was more than a little confused."

"Sounds like the setup Torbjorn and I came up with when we emptied that jar of peanut butter into Reinhardt's helmet." Tracer commented, smirking as the memory of the prank lit up inside her mind.

Fareeha gasped as her eyes widened and an astounded expression swept across her face. "Ohmygod, that was _you_?! Mum said that half the staff at Geneva were laughing their asses off for a week! I still ask Reinhardt what kind of hair gel he's using whenever I see him!"

"Guilty as charged. You know what the funniest part is? Winston still doesn't know where that jar of peanut butter went. He keeps a file on Athena where he's been trying to figure out who took it, and he's no closer than he was eight years ago!"

The two shared a hearty laugh for the next minute before finally calming down enough to actually be able to say something. "I hope you remembered to shut off your intercom. Winston wouldn't be too happy if you spoiled the mystery." Fareeha said while catching her breath.

"Don't sweat about it, it's no big deal. I'm actually gonna tell the big guy after we get back to Gibraltar." Tracer answered.

"Sounds like a good idea. Speaking of which, we should move to a new spot."

After zipping to a new rooftop and a look-over from this new vantage point revealed nothing out of the ordinary, Tracer sparked the conversation back up again as she took her seat along the roof's overlook.

"So, how'd the story with you and your dad at the same air base end? I kind of interrupted you in the middle of it."

"It's alright. It wasn't all that out of place." Fareeha reassured. "So, when I got to the CO's quarters, I opened it up to find Dad sitting at a small table, pizza and a six-pack of Moosehead in the middle of it and paper plates on either side. He got up, walked over to me, and when I was saluting him he wrapped me in a bear-hug."

"Aw, that's so sweet." Tracer beamed. "When was the last time he'd seen you?"

"About seven years before. The first thing he said to me was how tall I'd gotten."

Tracer smirked. "Really? And you're what, five-eight?"

"Yup. Mum and I are the tall ones in the family. Dad's two inches shorter than either of us. Anyways, he said there's no need for ceremony. He just wanted to talk to me."  
She sighed happily. "We probably spent four, maybe five hours catching up with each other. He told me how the Air Force was going, how he was lobbying the government to fund community developments up north, stuff like that. I told him how the Army was going for me, how Mum was doing, about Helix approaching me to test the Raptora prototype, how I wanted to join up with Overwatch. Before I went back to the barracks, we agreed that we'd do it again once a year. Didn't matter where or when, so long as we shared dinner and a conversation. The last thing he did before I left was give me my first guitar."

"No way!" Tracer exclaimed. "So he's the reason why you have that collection."

"Pretty much. With all the training and service time that Mum and the Army had given me, he suggested I get myself a hobby to keep from turning into a workaholic. I'd always liked playing with his guitar when I was little, but since three months of Army pay wouldn't get me close to the price of a good one, he gave it to me as a gift. It was even signed by the members of his favourite band. I never got to see them in concert; they split up after their lead singer died when Dad was fifteen. He told me he got lucky when he found it at a bargain shop in Victoria, B.C. and when he saw it, he immediately thought of the two of us listening to their albums when I was little."

She stopped and smirked at the memory that was crossing her mind. "He'd be playing the guitar and I, all of about five years old, would be belting out the lyrics, out of tune and messing up the words, but happy as can be." She began first humming, then quietly singing a tune that Tracer didn't recognize, but could tell was close to her friend's heart. " _It was in Bobcaygeon, where I saw the constellations, reveal themselves one star at a time..._ "

Tracer was grinning ear to ear. "That's beautiful. I wish I'd have met your dad by now. Sounds like he's as great as Ana was."

Fareeha didn't answer. Her smile and her melody faded away as turned her head down towards the stage; Lucio's performance was in the post-Crisis segment, showing how groups like Overwatch and the Shambali laboured to keep the tenuous peace between humans and Omnics. A wide array of colours and music of various tempos and tones represented the tribulations of this pursuit and the arduous task of making the equality that had been often shown on the surface hold true when not out in public.

"There something wrong?" Tracer asked concernedly.

Fareeha didn't turn to look back at her friend. "You know, Dad was actually the first person I told about following in Mum's footsteps." she whispered, as though there was some someone around that she didn't want to hear her words.

Tracer was caught off guard. "How come?" she probed.

"He was always the supportive one. When Mum didn't approve, you could tell, and I knew exactly what to expect if I told her."

"Did she?"

Fareeha's tone took on a slight edge and a hint of cynicism. "I told her it was my decision and it was what I wanted, but her answer was right on cue: Slow, quiet, almost too sweet, a long pause before she said she 'supported me'. She's been doing it since I was a teenager even though I've been able to see right through it the whole time." She picked up her helmet from off the cold slab of concrete underneath them and returned it to her head, activating the sensors as she rose to her feet and turned towards the concert.

Tracer didn't quite know where to go from there. Nothing she'd ever seen or heard had indicated that Fareeha's accusations were true, and for some time she was rendered speechless, unable to come up with the proper response. Memories of Ana sharing photos of a young Fareeha and reminiscing on the stories behind them with tears in her eyes rolled through her thoughts. Even the tattoo that mother and daughter shared under their eyes told her otherwise. When she did reply on another rooftop, she was hesitant, not wanting to anger her friend but hoping to give her a new take on what she had experienced. Her voice was low and her tone compassionate.

"You know, when Emily and I first started getting serious, I didn't tell her I was working for Overwatch and I went out of my way to try to make sure she didn't find out. She did eventually though, and I was terrified of what she was going to say, what with me risking my neck on a daily basis. When she did tell me, I'd been preparing for the worst for so long that that's all I heard: the worst. It was our first real big fight and it nearly tore us apart. It took nearly a week for me to stop fretting about it and realize that even though I'd thought she'd been angry, she was actually just fine with it. I guess I'd been so focused on what I feared she would say that it was like blinders on a horse."

She looked over at Fareeha, who hadn't moved a muscle since she'd put her helmet back on.

"Um, Fareeha? Hello? You been listening?" Tracer made an animated wave to try to attract her friend's attention.

"Shh!" Fareeha admonished with the raising of her index finger, her eyes still locked forward.

"What was that for?"

"Look." Fareeha pointed out across the gardens. "Two hundred fifty metres due south, by the fireworks setup." Her voice and tone were cool and commanding, as though she were out on the battlefield with a platoon under her command.

"What is it?" Tracer asked, rapidly turning her head in the direction that her colleague was pointing.

"What we've been looking for."

Tracer removed her orange-tinted goggles and squinted her eyes to try to see what it was she was supposed to be in sight. Scanning over countless pieces of topiary, she struggled to peer through both the night's shroud and the glare from the light that shined from the stage below. Just as she was about to tell Faheera that she couldn't see anything, she caught a glimpse of it; Two members of the production crew, pyrotechnicians in charge of the fireworks that were to be fired off as part of the grand finale of Lucio's audio-visual spectacular. Normally they'd be bustling around with a half-dozen others of their same profession like bees making honey, but the area was quiet, and these two in particular were off their feet, being dragged behind a hedge by some unknown assailant who had rendered them unconscious, or worse.

"I'd say I agree with you. We'd better be quick before more people get hurt." Tracer said.

"Winston, we've got suspicious activity south of the outside stage, around the fireworks. There are at least two personnel down and an unknown number of attackers. I suggest that Tracer and I investigate." Fareeha reported over her suit's intercom.

"Good work, you two." Winston replied. "This will most likely be Widowmaker's accomplice. Move in, take them out quick, and make sure the crowd doesn't figure anything out. The clock says that Lucio's presentation is almost over, and if those fireworks get tampered with, there's no telling what sort of destruction they could cause."

"Never fear, big guy." Tracer interjected. "We'll have them down for the count faster than you can say 'Bob's your uncle'. The cavalry's here, love. Remember?"

"How could I forget? Good luck to the both of you." he said assuredly before switching off the intercom.

Tracer snapped her goggles back on as Fareeha picked up her rocket launcher and held it in a ready position. The two of them exchanged a glance and a confirming nod before soaring off with the roar of a rocket engine and zipping away in a flash of blue.


	6. Chapter 6: Paint the Town Red

"Now this is my kinda job, eh Roady?" Junkrat giggled as he set the timer on the fireworks.

Roadhog made no indication of a response; He'd known for years that the fiery-haired maniac wasn't worth indulging. He instead looked to the skies through the goggles of his mask, knowing that they wouldn't be alone for much longer.

Junkrat continued on his tirade as he attached several bombs onto the fireworks."You said it wouldn't be worth the trouble, but oh sweet Christmas were you wrong on that one! A hot Mexican chick shows up outta nowhere n' offers us a metric arse-ton o' cash, and in exchange we get to treat a party full of Omnic-loving drongos to the bloody ending of the 1812 Overture, LITERALLY!" he cackled. "What kinda murderous explosive-obsessed psychos would we be if we passed this up?!"

Roadhog still took no notice.

"Well maybe it's time you were a little less over-the-top!" Junkrat shouted in what was increasingly a one-sided conversation. "Outta the two of us, I didn't blow up a skyscraper in L.A. for shits n' giggles, after all."

The pig-faced killer turned towards Junkrat and tried to say something, but was promptly cut off.

"OK, so _I_ was the guy who did that, but I'm trying to make a point here! Point is I'm not gonna be the dipstick who looks a gift horse in the mouth."

Another attempt at getting Junkrat's attention, who was just finishing up modifying the fireworks, was left in vain.

"Instead, I'm gonna be the dipstick who fires off a hundred 'Junkrat specials, patent pending' and gets to watch the watch the show before collecting a cool load a' big ones! It's _FOOLPROOF_!" the peg-legged lunatic laughed with insane euphoria.

"Sorry to say, but you won't be getting to see that show. Also, good for you for admitting the dipstick part. That's Step One out of the way." a cheeky Cockney-accented voice replied.

Junkrat spun around and looked furiously up at Roadhog. "Oi, what the hell're you on about ya wombat?! I'm tryin' ta make the mother of all explosions here and you keep on interrupting me!"

This time, the hog physically grabbed Junkrat by the scruff of his neck, dragged him away from the tampered fireworks, set him down, and showed him the reason he'd been trying to get his attention. Twenty feet in front of them stood Fareeha and Tracer, weapons drawn and in a ready stance.

"Oh, so that's who was saying that." Junkrat said. He then turned to his partner-in-crime and stuck his index finger in his face. "Ya literally had one job. ONE. JOB. How'd you screw this up?!"

Roadhog's face sunk into his open palm as he sighed loudly. " _Idiot_."

"Hey, you're those two crazies who stole the Crown Jewels a couple years ago!" Tracer realized, her expression growing stern and her grip on her pulse pistols growing tighter.

Junkrat stepped forward, holding the straps of his bomb harness like suspenders on an old-timey tuxedo. "That's us alright. Junkrat's the name, and Junkrat-ing's the... what was it? Um... Junkr... Jun-no, no... um... _OH NEVER MIND, JOKE CANCELLED! MOVE ALONG_!"

"Drop your weapons and disarm your bombs. You're coming with us." Fareeha demanded, bringing her rocket launcher to eye level and staring down the barrel.

"Ah yeah, about that." Junkrat replied, pacing back and forth as a wicked grin spread across his face and he adopted a smugly defiant stance. "Ol' Pig-face and I've got a huge payday waiting for us after we make scrap outta the blokes sitting off over there, and there isn't a single thing you can do that's gonna make us give it up. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's almost showtime, so I gotta set the finishing touches."

As he started to turn back around towards the fireworks, a burst of pulse bullets struck the ground in front of him, causing him to jump back and yelp in surprise.

"Tell you what; You put those away," he said, gesturing to the weapons that Tracer and Fareeha carried. "and bugger off for the next two minutes, we'll cut you both in for ten percent. You'll have to split it, of course."

Tracer and Fareeha made no response as Junkrat continued to try to worm his way out of the situation. "Fifteen then? Twenty? Twenty five? Fifteen, each?" With each failed offer, he hunched over more and his expression grew increasingly sniveling.

"You're wasting your time." Fareeha finally responded as she released one hand from her rocket launcher and began walking towards the two Junkers. As she pulled out a pair of energy handcuffs and readied to place them on Junkrat, his toothy, lunatic smile returned and his mad eyes looked towards his accomplice.

"You know Roady, I got an idea on how we can have our cake n' eat it too. You thinking what I'm thinking?"

Roadhog nodded back at his accomplice and in under a second threw his massive chain-hook at Fareeha, which wrapped around her midsection and yanked her towards him with the force and speed of a semi-truck. Simultaneously, he reached behind him and revealed an immense makeshift shotgun that he fired multiple times at Tracer, who blinked out of the way of the spray of shots effortlessly.

Instinctively, Fareeha activated her rocket boosters and took off to try to break free of the hook's grasp, but a turn of the wrist and a second heave of the chain sent her careening onto the stone walkway with a hard crunch. Before she could pick herself up, another wrench launched her into a solid stone pot, shattering it and collapsing the bush growing out of it on top of her. Before Roadhog could hurl her into something else however, a scattering of pulse bullets landed around him as Tracer dashed in. Circling her gargantuan opponent in an un-hitable blur of blue light, she peppered him with rapid-fire shots from her pistols, several of which found their mark in his bulk and sent him down onto one knee.

Fareeha groaned as she lifted the overturned bush off of her. The heads-up display of her suit showed no major damage done, though the soreness of her head and back didn't seem to agree. "Now I know how Reinhardt feels when he charges into a wall." she muttered.

As she got herself back on her own two feet and removed the hook, she picked up her weapon and walked quickly over to the bloodied and wheezing hog, who glared at her on an even level even though he was on his knees. Through his mask and her helmet visor, neither one could see the other's expression, but they both knew their enemy had a steely disposition and mutual disdain in their eyes.

Believing the monstrous pig defeated, Tracer looked around her in an attempt to locate where Junkrat had slunk off to. When she spotted him tampering with the fireworks again, she took off towards him, but as she came out of her blink right behind the lunatic and her feet made contact with the ground, she didn't hear the solid tapping sound of cold stone. Whatever it was underfoot gave way with a ca-chink and beeped loudly.

Tracer's eyes, previously focused forward like a falcon diving on its prey, widened in a nanosecond, and her head jerked downwards to see what it was she had stepped on. Beneath her was a large plastic and metal disc with a crudely done, toothy-grinned yellow smiley face painted on it.

Whenever she was coming in and out of blinks, the world around her, comparatively speaking, slowed down so that even the smallest detail could be taken in fully; Winston had designed this as a function of the accelerator to aid with high-speed maneuvers. Right now, she could see vividly as bit by bit, piece by piece, the mine she had trodden on was consumed by a blinding light and intense heat. Her accelerator's hum grew louder and the bright blue colouration intensified.

At the same time, Fareeha was about to slap on a pair of energy cuffs on Roadhog when a flash of fire and light forced her to shield her eyes and a shockwave nearly threw her to the ground. When she looked back at where the explosion had come from, she saw that the spot where Tracer had been standing was now a small crater, engulfed in smoke and flames. Her rigid composure was disintegrated as the coldness of sheer terror threatened to overwhelm her. She tried to scream out Tracer's name, but the horror of the sight before her robbed her of breath, leaving only a silent cry of " _Lena_!"

She wanted to race forward and search for something, anything, that would prove that her friend was still alive, but she was knocked down by a headbutt from the hog, who had used the confusion to his advantage. As he rose off of one knee, he reached behind him and took out a stubby, cylindrical container that he attached to one of the breathing devices on his gas mask and inhaled deeply from.

Fareeha had barely enough time to get up off the ground before the same pig-faced Junker who had been riddled with pulse rounds a mere five seconds earlier charged her and delivered a hard punch to her gut as though he hadn't even so much as been touched. Another punch connected, this time with her helmet, and sent her sprawling backwards, knocking her off balance again. As she caught herself with her suit's boosters, her head lowered and her eyes under her helmet narrowed in on him. Floating just above the ground, she raised her clenched fists in a boxing stance.

"You'll regret that." she asserted. Her proclamation was met by a primal roar from her opponent, who charged her like a mad bull. As he barreled towards her, her boosters kicked into high gear and rocketed her back in his direction. Their blows connected with a thunderous crash and left the recipients sliding backwards across the ground, but they both picked themselves up swiftly and charged each other again, weapons in hand and ready to dish out more punishment.

* * *

On the other side of the cloud of smoke, Junkrat cackled happily as he surveyed the destruction he had set off. Taking in a long, deep breath, he savoured the odour of gunpowder and burnt hedges that hung heavy in the air.

"Ah, nothing quite like kabooming someone to smithereens before they even realize it themselves." he sadistically mused. "Almost makes me feel... sentimental." He stood silent for a second, as though he was contemplating his actions.

It was a fleeting moment that was immediately forgotten. "Well that was fun while it lasted, now back to the _real_ good stuff!" he exclaimed with a laugh before turning back towards his nearly-finished device and installed the final pieces of his contraption. "Say, I wonder how many of those bots and bot-lovers heard that?" he chortled.

"Just checked that for you," a Cockney-accented voice from an indiscernible origin called out. "and luckily, our guy says none of them did."

Junkrat's self-satisfied smile was wiped away immediately as he whirled around; he'd recognized the voice instantly, but he could't believe his ears that the voice's owner still existed. At that moment, he was tackled to the ground by a streak of blue light that revealed itself to be Tracer, alive and well despite being seemingly obliterated seconds ago.

Junkrat was utterly flabbergasted. "You're supposed to be _dead_! How're you not spread across three different counties?!"

With a haughty expression, Tracer pointed at her chronal accelerator. "Rewind, love. Always helps when time is on my side." She then flipped out one of her pulse pistols from its holster and pressed the barrel against the madman's nose. "You on the other hand..."

Junkrat curled backwards in cowardice. "T-take it easy now. I was just kidding earlier. You know how it is, eh? Friendly conversation, good times with good buddies, and then you blow 'em to kingdom come! You've done that before, right? Right?" he laughed nervously.

"Can't say that I have." Tracer replied as she grabbed him by his bomb harness and lifted him off the ground.

"Well you know, Rocket Queen back there turned down getting in on the payday, but you never did. I can cut your share outta Roadhog's still. Real nice thing to be in on, I guarantee."

"You'll try to weasel your way out of anything, won't you?" Her voice was coloured with a mix of incredulity and exasperation.

"And when that don't work, I do THIS!" Raising his artificial right arm, he gripped a trigger and pressed down on it. Behind him, the device that he had been tinkering with the past several minutes came to life, a digital monitor glowing before beginning a countdown from thirty. A spark went down the wires that were branching out from the apparatus and terminated at the launchers that the fireworks were placed in.

Junkrat grinned psychotically at Tracer, who was looking at the device with both fear and curiosity. "You see," he explained. "when that goes off, every last one of those fireworks is gonna get turned into a bloody awesome guided missile and, well, let's just say the bigwigs and suits back over there are gonna _paint the town red!_ "

As he cackled at his own self-amusement, Tracer tightened her grip on his bomb harness and pushed her pistol harder against his nose, trying to enforce an intimidating visage.

"So what's it gonna be, kick me 'round or go be a hero?" he posed, his confidence showing that he knew exactly what it was Tracer was trying not to show. "You only got time for one."

Almost too quickly, Tracer loosened her hold on Junkrat's harness, dropped him to the ground, and blinked off to the device.

"Well that was just about too predictable!" he laughed as he dusted himself off. "I'm off 'ta go pick up my reward. It's been fun, really. Who knows? Maybe I'll blow you up for real nex-"

The breath from Junkrat's lungs was forced out all at once with a high-pitched scream as a giant metal chain-hook wrapped around his chest and sent him hurtling backwards through the last wisps of smoke. On the other side, he scraped along the stone pathway before coming to a sudden halt against Roadhog's wheezing mass, who himself was pinned to the ground at the foot of a triumphant Fareeha, standing over him with his hook in her own hands.

Back at Junkrat's gadget, Tracer was combing over the device, looking for some way to prevent a hundred makeshift missiles from laying waste to the dignitaries. "Winston, the fireworks have been jerry-rigged into missiles and are going to go off in fifteen seconds. How do I shut them down?" she said frantically over her earpiece.

Winston spoke with urgency, but also reassuringly. "You can't prevent them from launching in that short of a time, but you can keep them from hitting the audience. The device you're looking at is likely hooked into the remote launcher. Take the outer covering off and there should be a cluster of wires attached to the relay."

"Already done." Tracer answered, tossing the monitor aside. "It's at ten seconds now. You might wanna hurry with the explanation!"

"Cut to the chase, got it. Can you see which wires are connected to which outlets?" Winston asked.

* * *

At the same time, Fareeha was watching from a distance with great interest as Tracer fiddled with the contraption.

"She's not-gonna-make-it!" Junkrat mocked in a sing-song voice.

"Shut up!" Fareeha barked, tugging on the chain that she had him ensnared on. As she looked back up at Tracer, however, there was a gnawing feeling within her that couldn't help but wonder if the peg-legged pyromaniac was right. "You can do it." she whispered under her breath, not wanting to betray any signs of weakness to her enemies.

After a tense few more seconds that seemed to go on endlessly, Tracer blinked over to where Fareeha was keeping the Junkers under submission. No sooner had she arrived when the fireworks ignited and soared into the air with a chorus of screeches and high-pitched whistles. Junkrat looked up at the sky in victory, only to have it wiped away and replaced with utter shock as the fireworks detonated in the air, sending an array of sparkling colours across the night sky. Back at the stage, Lucio's performance had similarly met its triumphant ending, depicting the success of the peace negotiations that had brought them all to Versailles on that night and garnering a standing ovation from the entire audience.

"Oh _COME ON_!" Junkrat screamed in furious dismay. "How'd you rework my bombs?!"

Tracer strode over to the vehemently angry Australian and bent over to look him in the eye. "One thing you forgot about, love." she gloated as she produced the outer cover of his creation, showing him the digital monitor frozen at exactly one second. "Time is on my side."

Junkrat was indignant. "Oh ha ha ha, very funny!" he said as he scowled and turned cheek, pouting like a spoiled child.

Fareeha then stepped in and began disarming the defeated duo and placing energy cuffs on them. "Well, I'm just thankful that we both made it out of this in one piece. I almost thought I'd lost you back there." she said.

"Yeah, this was a close shave even for my standards." Tracer replied. She then bent over over to pick up the littered array of bombs, guns, and various other lethal devices that were being removed from the Junker's persons. As the pile grew higher, she was forced to increasingly modify her stance so that the weapons didn't make her capsize like a top-heavy boat. "You know, I can drop these off at the ship for you." she offered through a laboured grunt.

Fareeha gave an affirming nod, then turned away as she activated her earpiece. "We've got the perpetrators, a pair of hired thugs, most likely signed up by Talon as someone they could dispose of easily in case things went south."

"Oi, we aren't just some hired thugs!" Junkrat shouted resentfully. "I'll have you know that we've got twenty-five million on our skins!"

His yapping was cut short by a hard cross to the cheek. "What part of 'shut up' don't you understand?" Fareeha snapped.

Junkrat rolled his eyes back into their sockets as he frowned with extreme contempt.

"I'd suggest holding them until the gala's over." she suggested. "Once the event's done, we'll leave them for the gendarmes. In the meantime, I'll keep an eye on them and see if they know anything more about what Talon's got planned."

"Good idea. With Lucio's show finished, most of the work will be inside, making sure Talon doesn't try to execute a Plan B. Tracer and McCree can handle it from there. Winston out."

Fareeha then grabbed Junkrat and Roadhog by the chain of the handcuffs and readied to take off.

"Whoa whoa, easy on the merchandise! 'Irradiated basketcase' ain't an easy look to come by!" Junkrat complained as Fareeha slung him over her shoulder.

Faheera took no notice, purposefully blocking out her prisoner's drivel so that it wouldn't drive her as insane as he was. Just as she was about to take off, Tracer stopped her.

"Wait up a moment." Tracer interrupted. She walked up close to Faheera, covering one side of her mouth with a free hand and speaking softly. "Back on the rooftop, did you catch what I was saying just before we spotted these two?"

Fareeha didn't answer immediately. She tilted her head up as though she was recollecting the moment in her head. A few seconds later, she turned back to Tracer. "Can't say I did. Sorry." she said monotonously.

Tracer betrayed a hint of dejection at first, but recomposed herself quickly. "Oh, OK then. It... wasn't that important anyway. Take care." she said before an instant later blinking off towards the palace in a brilliant blue pulse of light.

"You too." Fareeha called back, but Tracer was long gone by the time the words had escaped her mouth. Her suit's boosters turned on with a growing whine, a din that muffled out all noise around her. "Like blinders on a horse." she whispered solemnly as her boosters reached full power and carried both her and her captives off towards the buildings surrounding the perimeter of the grounds.

In the localized noise and confusion of her launch point, what hedges and pieces of stonework hadn't been obliterated by the recent action shook and swayed under the combination of noise and wind generated. It was from behind the cover of these upset plants and cracked statues that Sombra had invisibly bore witness to Fareeha and Roadhog's brawl, Junkrat's tricks and Tracer's dance with death, and the narrowly successful disarmament of the contraption. Now with the area clear, she had let her invisibility fade away, a lavender outline being filled in with her features.

Placing two fingers on her earpiece, she spoke with a mocking, derisive tone. "Gabe? You still there? Am I interrupting your brooding again?"

On the other end, Reaper exhaled loudly. "This had better be good." he growled.

"Oh don't go into full-on _aguafiestas_ mode so quickly. I thought I actually heard some happiness underneath all that edge."

"Just cut to the chase." Reaper demanded, exasperated by her complete lack of respect.

She grinned smugly. "OK, but only because you asked so nicely. _La rata y el puerco_ just had their gunpowder plot cut short. The Amari kid and Lacroix's favourite playmate showed up and kicked their asses. You should have seen it. Pretty impressive."

Reaper's gravelly voice took an even more sinister manner than usual. "Then they've played their part. As of now, Phase Two is underway. Is your part ready to go?"

"Of course it is." she said proudly. "I thought you'd learned to stop doubting me by now."

"Then get ready. When Lacroix gives the signal, you know what to do. Once you're done, get back to the ship and maintain systems. Nothing's going to save Overwatch this time."

"Night isn't over yet Gabe. I'm sure you'll find a way for everything to go wrong."

"Do your job and we won't have to worry about that." he snapped. "Now get into position and keep the chatter down until this is over." With that, the feed on his end cut out, leaving only static in its place.

Sombra switched off her earpiece and sniffed. Whenever it got down to crunch time, Reaper was even more irritable than usual.

 _It's going to be a lot quieter in the future. I may almost miss you,_ she thought to herself. _Still, he's actually right about this one. There's no way Overwatch is going to make it out of here alive_. _Might as well try to make it interesting._

As this last thought crossed her mind, a crack of thunder caused her to look up, where she saw the clouds that Faheera had said wouldn't arrive had rolled in, bringing with them a cold torrent of rain. Sombra walked out slowly and confidently from behind her smoldering hedge towards the palace. With each step, her features turned transparent, starting from her feet, upwards over her jacket, over the glowing purple device fused to her back, across the interface on her left hand, and finally travelling over her face and hair until she was once again completely invisible, the only thing alluding to her location being a faint outline where the rain didn't hit the ground, silently lurking around the palace and its occupants with deadly intent.


	7. Chapter 7: Missing Details

"I reckon congratulations are in order, Ms. Oxton!" McCree proclaimed.

"Oh come now, Athena calls me 'Ms. Oxton'. I thought you knew that." Tracer laughed as she removed her accelerator and returned it to its position underneath the control center's table and received a solid high-five from the gunslinger. Across the rest of the ballroom, the dignitaries were beginning to file in once more and take their seats for the night's final hour of festivities.

"I figured it'd be somethin' to call the fine lady who just saved the day. Well, the night that is."

"It wasn't all me, you know. If it hadn't been for Fareeha, I don't think we'd have been able to do it."

"Nah, don't sell yourself short; you both done great. Did I ever tell you about the time a few of the guys from Blackwatch tried collecting on those two wingnuts?"

"No. What happened?" Tracer asked, somewhat puzzled but also curious.

"Well, let's just say I'd be real surprised to see any a' them 'round now, at least in one piece that is." McCree smirked. "Most of them're like bison; huge angry walls of muscle with tiny peabrains and bad attitudes."

"Funnily enough, that describes one of those Junkers almost to a T." Tracer bantered back. "The other one was a skinny little tosser who just wouldn't stop yapping. Worst of all, he had the most annoying, high-pitched voice you could imagine; Faheera could barely stand it. The only time he actually didn't have anything to say was after Winston had walked me through how to shut down the device that he used to try to turn the fireworks into guided missiles."

McCree's eyes widened and he whistled in a manner that showed he was impressed.

"I know. Pretty crazy plan. What about on your end? Did you catch Widowmaker in the act?"

The cowboy frowned discouragingly as he turned back towards the panel and, after a few button pushes, called up the footage that the camera drones had collected over the course of two hours of buzzing around the stage. One such drone's eye was fixated on Widowmaker for the entire show, hoping to catch some sort of errant action, unusual glance, anything that could be used to deduce further details of Talon's scheme. For the vast majority of the time, all the drone captured was her staring blankly at the stage, her face not betraying even the faintest expression. The only action she was seen taking was at the very end, as the fireworks shot up into the air and Lucio was awarded with a standing ovation. She stood, but gave no applause, instead tilting her head to the right at an angle and pressing a finger against her ear.

Tracer leaned in closer to better analyze the image. She glanced over at the screen showing the feed of the fireworks going off, then back over at Widowmaker. Her eyes peeled away from the blank, soulless face down to the time marker at the bottom corner of the screen. She then did the same for the fireworks feed before slumping back in her chair and sighing in disbelief, her brow furrowed and her eyes wide.

"Bugger!" she exclaimed. "She knew we were going to stop them!"

"Winston figured that out too." McCree replied. "He had his suspicions up when she didn't clear out right 'round when you called up and said the thing was about to go off. I wasn't too sure, so he suggested that we wait 'till you got back and letya give a second opinion on it."

Tracer placed her index finger on her temple as her as her head lowered and her eyes sped from side to side like watching a tennis match. "Well, do we know what she was saying? Maybe Winston picked up her channel." she managed to compile.

One of the screens was diverted away from the recorded footage with a brief flash of static before refocusing on Winston's face. "Unfortunately, I couldn't. She was on an encrypted channel that Athena couldn't tap into during the seven point four seconds it was online. We've been monitoring communication feeds all night, but hers hasn't shown up for long enough to get a trace on it." the gorilla explained.

"On top a' that, the noise from the fireworks and the dignitaries kept the drones from pickin' her voice up." McCree chimed in.

"Couldn't you zoom the camera in and read her lips?" Tracer inquired, at the same time using her own panel to zoom and enhance on the image.

"They teach ya how to talk so nobody can read your lips pretty early on in Blackwatch training. I looked her over just before you got back an' she's got it down to a damn science."

Tracer sighed pushed her chair back and stared up at the skylight in the middle of the ceiling. With the storm, the natural light that had brought out the full glistening glory of the gilded decorations and shimmering extravagance of the room was lost. Though the chandeliers did still illuminate the room, the glamourous aesthetic was dimmed, and the shadows cast by the growing crowd of returning VIPs were shorter, blurred together much more easily, and were in danger of being lost entirely.

"What about Faheera? Has she gotten the Junkers to talk yet?"

McCree didn't verbally respond, but promptly activated a channel on the control board and gestured for her to speak into the microphone.

"Fareeha, love, staying dry out there?" she cheerfully asked.

"At least trying. You and McCree found any evidence on Widowmaker yet?" Faheera replied.

"We're still working on it. Speaking of which, have you gotten the Junkers to say anything yet? Winston and I could use some leads."

"I wish I had good news for you, but to say they're being uncooperative would be an understatement." There was boiling aggravation evident in her voice at the mere mentioning of the two Australian menaces.

Before she could say anything else, Tracer and McCree suddenly heard Junkrat screaming off in the distance.

"You gonna bring us in from the bloody rain or do ya plan on drownin' us you fu-AAH!" A lightning bolt suddenly tore across the sky, one that could even be seen through the skylight. No sooner had it vanished when a crack of thunder shook the ballroom and sounded through the channel with a loud bass resonance.

"Don't worry. Once I get something, I'll let you know." Fareeha assured. "Now, if you'll excuse me..." Her words began to trail off into a mixture of Arabic and one other language none of them seemed to recognize, the angry inflection of which, as well as Junkrat's whines of "Not the face! _NOT THE FACE!_ ", gave indications that led Tracer to swiftly turn off the channel before the audio got too graphic. She then slowly lifted herself out of her chair and surveyed over the ballroom for a minute. In front of her, the full ensemble of esteemed guests had returned and were making polite small talk with each other as they took their seats at the tables and readied for the final stretch of the night.

Tracer sank back down into her chair. "She's still here. Widowmaker's still standing around, probably dishing out details on our every move, the gala's about to end, and we're no closer to beating her than we were three hours ago!" she exclaimed angrily.

"We've still got time. You and McCree still have the camera drones, Faheera's getting whatever information she can out of the two assets you captured, and Angela's still got her clutch as a last resort. We can still do this." Winston replied assuredly.

"Yeah, sure, but this don't seem right." McCree interjected, similarly unhappy. "Ain't it just a little too perfect that a pair of maniacs everybody knows the faces of get caught red-handed instead of any Talon agents? On top of that, we still haven't seen Reyes anywhere and everything I know about him says that he'd be on this party like a dog on a bone. For all we know, he's got more than just one assassin hiding in plain sight, only difference is that we ain't gonna see them 'till it's too late! Point is, we're missin' details here, details that we shoulda straightened out by now."

The gorilla's gaze turned stony and his chest puffed up."We've been over this already. We can't just swoop in and take them out without evidence to back us up. You can't do anything if you're arrested or shot."

"Sorry big guy, but McCree's right. We joined back up with you because we didn't want to sit around while the bad guys got ahead of us. Tonight isn't showing any sort of change from what brought down the original Overwatch." Tracer added on.

Winston's retort was cut off when the voice of the PA system boomed once more. "Esteemed dignitaries, we invite you to take your seats. The final segment of tonight's ceremonies is about to begin."

Winston sighed and his eyes glanced downward as he spoke. "This is possibly the most important night in recent history. If we can do this right, we won't be on the defensive anymore. Talon will be scrambling to regain the ground they lost and we'll be able to take the fight to them, but for now, we've got to keep the peace." He looked back up at the gunslinger and the bubbly young former pilot right in the eyes. "We've still got time. We just need to play lookout for a little longer. After that, we'll be able to take all the action we want." he said, making sure that his two colleagues saw and heard genuine hope and resolve.

Tracer and McCree's expressions slowly softened as their friend's words took effect. Turning towards each other, they shared wordless stares and gestures before looking back at the screen.

"Could never stay mad at you for long. We'll do it. For peace." she said.

"For peace." he replied before cutting the feed.

* * *

With the channel closed, Winston allowed his chest to deflate and his posture to collapse, exhaling as he slouched over in his tire-chair, his head drooping like a dying flower and his eyes half-closed to where he was seeing more of his own gut than his feet. His limbs and extremities grew ponderous and exhaustion swept over him. His mind played through McCree and Tracer's concerns over and over again, each repetition adding to his drained feeling and forcing him to rub his temples to relieve a throbbing headache.

"Heavy is the head that wears the crown, I see." Athena remarked, cutting Winston's reflection short.

"I forgot I'd programmed you with Shakespeare." he replied quietly.

"You didn't. I read _Henry IV_ after I heard Commander Morrison quote that line. Part of my continual upgrading protocols, which you did, by the way, program me with."

Winston snorted. It wasn't often that Athena exchanged dialogue, even though she was surprisingly good at it.

"Your brain is producing substantial amounts of melatonin. You need to rest. I am capable of fulfilling your duties." she added.

He took in a lengthy breath as he craned his head upwards and cracked his knuckles. "Thanks, but I'd like to see this to the end. Also, how many times have I told you not to monitor my vitals?"

"Twenty-seven, excluding just now." she answered forthright. "I only do so because you seem to be letting your job take a large toll on you."

Not quite knowing or wanting to respond immediately, Winston cricked his neck and lolled his head in the same lazy motion that a top makes as it loses speed. As he stretched it upward and felt the muscles pull and strain, the line of pictures from the old days on his headboard captured his attention. His gaze stopped on one in particular, a photograph of Jack Morrison, taken in the last years of the Golden Age.

Compared to the other images of the former Strike Commander, which showed a chipper, strapping, homegrown youth with golden blonde hair and a fire in his eyes, this one was quieter, more seasoned, weary. His figure, while still tall and muscled, was thinner, near to the point of being spindly. His hair had turned a cloudy grey, and scars and dark lines crisscrossed his sallow face. Winston could only assume that each one lingered with more than just an occasional tinge of pain. The once sky-blue eyes had dulled as well, their colour seemingly ebbing away through the streaks of blood-red that shot from the pupils like the spokes of a wheel. His expression was stoic, demanding respect but also, the gorilla could just make out, concealing a deep-rooted fatigue with all the professionalism he could muster.

 _Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Or, in this case, that leads Overwatch_ , he thought.

He stared at the picture for a moment longer before rotating his look towards the screen that Athena most often used. "You probably got to see more of what happened behind the scenes than any of us. What was Jack like for the last little while? You know, when no one else was around." he asked through a hushed whisper. His voice sounded almost hesitant, as though he was afraid of what the answer might be.

Athena was taken aback by the request. "I... am not sure that I should be divulging such information, Winston. Nor do I think that this is the time for-"

"I'd just like to know, please." he implored. "I promise I won't tell anyone else."

The A.I. silently deliberated before finally answering. "He was... tired. Much of his off time was spent in a similar posture to what you had adopted a minute ago. He wanted more than anything to help people and save lives, but he felt weighed down, helpless, at times jaded."

At the same time, Winston leaned forward and gazed upon his reflection in one of the black parts of the screen. He studied his face carefully, running his fingers along the lines. "Jaded?" he asked.

"Every time the Director or someone else told him otherwise, every time he lost people and missions, it was as though he lost a part of himself. He'd lock himself in his office, order me to screen all his calls, and bury himself in paperwork for days. By the end, the spark was gone. He seemed to hate Overwatch itself almost as much as he did Reyes for destroying it."

Winston's gaze moved from the lifeless picture of the Commander to a different one, this one taken less than a year ago. In it, Winston stood shoulder to shoulder with Faheera and Lucio, both of whom were beaming ear to ear. Behind them, Tracer, McCree, Mei, and Reinhardt had snuck in for a cheeky photobomb. Fond memories rekindled themselves inside the gorilla's mind, particularly the warm, open-armed welcome that the two new recruits had received.

"That was then." Winston stated. "This is now. McCree and Lena are right. We need more details."

"What do you want me to do?" Athena asked, eager and proper.

"You monitor for any sort of unordinary energy fluctuations. Heat signatures, electro-magnetics, the works. I'll run a loop on all the recorded Talon comms, maybe that will allow for us to de-encrypt it." the scientist and current leader of Overwatch ordered.

"Affirmative. Activating electro-magnetic spectrum sweep and heat signature anomaly detection protocols."

With a few rapidly typed commands, the holoscreen of the computer had a new screen called up, one that showed the gathered seconds of Talon's intercepted communications on a waveform line. Without hesitation, Winston set to work on repeating the feed, simultaneously typing in an algorithm to decipher the enigma he had been presented. Once again, the words of Dr. Harold ran through Winston's head, giving him renewed motivation. " _Never accept the world as it appears to be. Dare to see it for what it could be._ "

* * *

As the lights dimmed once again and the curtains drew back, Lucio strutted out onto the stage and halted at the mic stand, where he was greeted by a standing ovation. In a single, suave flourish, he placed his weight on his heels and, pushing off from the mic stand, spun around in front of it and took a bow before spinning back around behind it.

"So y'all seem to still be doing good, am I right? You enjoy the show?" he inquired, swagger ebbing from his every word.

His question was answered by another thunderous applause, the loudest of the night.

"No seriously, tell me what you really think." he joked after taking another bow. The crowd collectively chortled before continuing their ovation. At the control panel, McCree chuckled lightly at the DJ's wit.

"Man's got a knack for it, huh Lena?" he remarked, but Tracer took no notice, opting instead to continue gazing at the fresh images of Widowmaker that the drones were providing, her eyes locked forward and unblinking, like a cat waiting to pounce on a mouse.

"Hey, you listening?" the cowboy asked, moderately puzzled. "I thought you'd be enjoyin' this."

"I just want to finish this up. She's still at least one step ahead of us, so we need to not kid around." she answered bluntly and without diverting her gaze.

McCree was offput. Tracer was rarely, if ever, too engrossed to pass up friendly talk, much less turn it down in so unflinchingly. He looked back towards the stage, so far off from his location, where Lucio was still in full swing.

"So, how's about we get down to the real business here? We're coming off the best round of peace talks in human-Omnic history, so there's a few sentients who'd like to come up and say a few words about it. How 'bout that for capping off the night, whaddaya say?" the DJ proposed.

The crowd responded once again with spirited applause.

"That's what I like to hear!" he proclaimed in return. "First up on the list, we got a Nobel Prize winner in physics with a soft spot for reality TV, give it up for Omar L: Model Six Point Two!" As the crowd applauded, Lucio moved out of the way of the mic stand with a quick slide and gestured that it was all theirs before break-dancing his way back to stage right to await the first of the orators among the night's dignitaries, an Omnic dressed in tails, wearing a set of glasses over its eyes and a turban on its head.

As the speeches began, McCree took advantage of a perceived lull in activity to spark up a talk with Tracer again.

"Hey, sorry 'bout earlier. I just thought you'd be a bit more... what's the word I'm lookin' for? Joe-vey-all?"

A grin crept up the side of Tracer's face. "It's pronounced 'jovial'." she chuckled.

"Yeah well, that too." he joked. "I'd just figured since the DJ up there'd had you in a good mood earlier that you'd have liked-"

"And I do. Lucio's been doing a great job. It's just that I've had some bad experiences with not being ahead of the curve. It leads to good people dying."

McCree momentarily pondered what Tracer was saying before he realized what she was getting at. He'd seen the newsfeeds of the tragedy, grainy footage showing a rooftop explosion followed by both Tracer and Widowmaker freefalling from said rooftop. No sooner had Tracer blinked out of the way of an oncoming bullet, that very same projectile had buried itself deep into Tekartha Mondatta's heart, sending the Omnic's metal frame flying backwards onto the cobblestones in front of a large gathering of followers. At the same time, he could feel his metal arm stiffen up. He winced as he looked down at the prosthetic; Though he'd had it on for nearly eight years now, his capability enhanced and his wound mended, there were times when the pain flared up, forcing attention to be brought upon itself and the roots of its problem.

"Yeah, I know what that's like." His tone was marked by humility. "I don't like nobody being a step ahead of me neither. I'm sorry."

Tracer finally broke her concentration on the screens upon hearing this and swiveled her chair in his direction. "Apology accepted." she said warmly before turning back towards the screens. "Now, let's get this done."

The next ten minutes were completely silent between the two, their focus squarely on the drones, the eyes in the sky they offered, and the triumphant orations of the assembled guests.

"Y'know, speaking of gettin' things done..." McCree suddenly broke the pause with.

Tracer turned back towards her colleague, not knowing what precisely he was talking about. Once she saw that he had produced a carton of cigarettes from his jacket, she was promptly irked by the notion. "Oh, you have got to be joking." she remarked, leaning forward and placing her index and middle fingers on her right temple.

"Hey, man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Besides, I'll only be going through one." he replied, playing at an innocent demeanor.

"Define 'one'." she requested firmly. She had heard stories about McCree's 'smoke breaks' from several other members over the years, and none of them bode well with regards to brevity.

He opened up the carton and plucked out a single cigarette, twiddling with it as he placed the package back in his jacket. "This a good definition?" he said with moderate, but growing anticipation.

Tracer shook her head slowly and smiled incredulously. "Are you sure you couldn't have gotten this out of the way sooner? We're at kind of an important moment here and you know it."

"I'll be right outside. Five minutes, tops. Just long enough to do one in before I get completely drenched by that rainstorm. Call me right back in if you need me, but I know you can handle it just fine 'till then. Here." he said as he tossed the carton, sans the cigarette he'd already removed, into Tracer's hands. "Just to insure that I'll be back soon."

Tracer sat back up and smirked. "Fine, but don't expect me to cover for you if Winston calls in."

"With any luck, I'll be back before he knows. Besides, it's not like we're going to find our big lead at this exact time, right?" he asked rhetorically as he raised himself out of his chair.

"You never know. Just remember: Five minutes, like you said." she reminded him as he hopped off the side of the control centre. She didn't watch as he skirted around the outer wall and slipped out the door into the gardens, instead focusing back on the camera drones, vigilant and ready for the next move.

* * *

The moment McCree was outside, he realized that the rain was coming down even harder than he'd thought; before he'd even taken two steps outside he was already half-soaked. Quickly sidestepping to where the door and the wall met, he turned his head upwards and scanned for any sort of overhang or ledge that would provide him with shelter. There was one, a hundred feet off to his left, that seemed to protrude out far enough to be useful as a dry spot.

 _Dry and empty. That'll do good._ he thought to himself. _Probably shouldn't have given Lena the whole box, but c'est la vie, I guess._

Quickly but carefully, he shimmied along the wall towards the ledge, trying to minimize the amount of rain that drenched him. When he finally reached the overhang, his jacket was sopping wet and his boots were beginning to fill up as well. Once safely out of the rain, he wiped away the droplets in his hair with his hand before reaching into his jacket and retrieving the cigarette as well as a shiny metal lighter. Despite the miserable conditions, he now had the next five-odd minutes to himself, and he was going to enjoy every second of it.

At least, that was his intention.

"Never fails. Every single time I get sent to guard an external perimeter, it rains. Insult to injury, I didn't even remember to bring my damn raincoat! Mom's never gonna let me hear the end of it."

McCree froze in place at the sound of the voice like a deer after hearing a twig snap in the woods, afraid to move an inch in case it gave his position away. His eyes darted in the direction that the voice had come from, just a few more feet to the left in what appeared to be an area of the wall where it dove inward about three feet and continued to the left for ten before returning to the original, more outward path.

"I mean, why'd they put me outside anyway? Everyone knows I'm the guy to go to when the fighting starts. I can take on anyone, am I right?" it continued.

The voice itself was of particular interest to McCree; a thick Lower New York accent with a superiority complex and an enjoyment for fighting. While he'd met probably hundreds of people who met that description perfectly over the years, this voice was familiar, oddly so. He knew that he'd heard it before somewhere, but dredging through his memory only turned up blanks.

"OK, sure, those two Aussie nutcrackers kicked my ass and blew the rest of my squad to hell, but that was way back. I could take 'em now. They've softened up if the Amari kid and the monkey's pet project can beat 'em." the voice spoke.

McCree's eyes shot open like the gate of an angry bull at a riding contest. Now he knew where that voice was from. _Blackwatch. Sonuvabitch, sometimes I hate when I'm right._

His right hand slowly placed the unlit cigarette inside the side pocket of his pants, then added the lighter before discreetly inching its way up and inside his jacket, pulling out the Peacekeeper from its shoulder holster. A methodical check-over of the gun revealed that despite the jacket being soaked, the weapon itself was mostly dry. _Thank God for quality craftsmanship,_ he thought as he cocked the hammer of the gun back and placed both hands on the grip.

Stepping lightly and moving deliberately, he slowly tiptoed out from under the ledge towards the dip in the wall, where the voice was continuing to speak.

"Yeah, maybe I will, but I ain't gonna disobey the commander's orders just to show the guys I still gotta pair. I'm fine with waiting a bit longer."

The brick and mortar crevasse was shrouded by darkness, shadows from the outer lights whose beams had overlooked this small, seemingly innocuous detail. As he crept closer, the first voice became clearer, as did a second one that previously couldn't be made out over the pattering of rain. _Two of 'em_ _,_ he realized. _But there's gotta be more. Blackwatch squads always got at least seven. How'd they keep unseen this whole time?_

Finally reaching the edge of the wall before it dove inward, he twisted his neck to the side and forced his eyes as far to the left as they could go, hoping to peer around the edge without being seen in return.

"Yeah, I never liked those metal morons either. It's gonna be fun watching everyone get angry over their deaths and blaming each other for it. You know they're saying that EMPs should be banned from warfare now, like what they did with gas who knows how long ago? Personally, I think us using one tonight is too good for 'em. An EMP on the Omnics, that is." the first voice snarked.

At the same time, a flash of lightning pierced the cover of the shadows, unveiling the owners of the pair of voices for McCree to see. Both were dressed in the uniforms of security guards, the exact same ones that had been standing at the exits of the ballroom all night long. The first voice belonged to a mid-height, strongly built man with a hooked nose and oversized ears, while the other, quieter voice belonged to a pear-shaped man with a brown duster on his upper lip.

McCree's head shot back from overlooking the dip. _Kowalski and Tepesch._ His expression went blank as a feeling of terrible urgency swept through his mind. In just under two minutes, he'd discovered more than what he and three other people had been able to find all night, and the thought of being one step behind, especially now and especially considering what had just been revealed, was almost too much to bear.

Tightening his grip on his revolver, he knew the likelihood that they'd seen him peering around the corner was high; He'd have to drop them. After that, inform Winston, Tracer, everyone, about what he'd learned and do it this very instant or a lot of good beings were going to die on his watch, more of which he didn't need or want weighing down his conscience or hurting those he cared about.

He would have done so had he not been rendered unconscious in an instant by a heavy-handed blow to the back of the head, sent crashing down to earth, and had the Peacekeeper wrenched out of his grasp.


	8. Chapter 8: We're Out Of Time

Leaning on a roof-mounted heating unit in the pouring rain, waiting for the next order to be called out, was the last thing Sombra enjoyed doing.

The Mexican hacker sighed audibly, running her right hand through her drenched hair in order to keep it to one side and not interfere with the strips of hardware interface that she had grafted into her skull years ago.

 _Ugh, they'd better not start running_ , she grumbled in her head, referring to the varying shades of violet that brightened the tips of her hairstyle. _Should have brought a_ maldita _umbrella_.

She flipped through a holographic catalog of connections and stockpiled secrets, each one as dirty as it was elusive. On nights such as these, she much preferred her usual activities. A Los Muertos rave, a few rounds at Calaveras, perhaps some globetrotting to make some new "friends", or preferably, all of the above. Anything was better than having orders barked into her ear at random intervals by the dark-clad buzzkill formerly known as Gabriel Reyes (or 'Reaper' as he insisted on being called) and the monotonous sheep formerly known as Amelie Lacroix. However, she knew that Talon didn't exactly reward disobedience, especially regarding orders straight from the top of the Council like this mission, so she had to make her own fun for the time being.

Sneaking around the palace of Versailles under the cover of her self-designed camouflage technology certainly had its benefits. For one, the hors d'oeuvres were divine; she had used her high-tech cloak to capitalize on the opportunity to slip in amidst the crowd and steal a bite. Better still was how the small-minded yes-men that she was partnered with got so irritated whenever she got off a good one on them. But certainly her favourite part of the night was the fact that so many big names, representing so many high places, were all packed into one room at one time, allowing for a leisurely indulgence of her ongoing project: Solving the supposedly unsolvable puzzle, a Gordian Knot whose unraveling had defined both of her lives.

Memories flashed through Sombra's mind as she shut off the hologram and closed her eyes. She saw the look of shock and terror on the face of Olivia Colomar, an eighteen-year old hacker and blackmailer too ambitious and naive for her own good, as she stumbled onto a secret bigger than anything that she had coveted before.  
Rumours had abounded in hacker circles about something as well-hidden as it was lethal. _La Conspiracion_ , The Conspiracy, they'd called it. They'd said finding it, let alone cracking it, was impossible, a Dangerous Game that no one had survived. Young Olivia had never backed down from a challenge before, so why suddenly do so now? For months, she searched every dark corner of the Web, eavesdropped on every hushed whisper, and spied on every scared lackey, but it was in vain. She found nothing for so long, only to accidentally tumble face-first down the rabbit-hole and discover absolutely everything in a matter of minutes.

Instead of finding a wonderland of dirty secrets, however, she found a twisting maze of intrigue and revelation that led to the most powerful people and organizations in the world, guarded fiercely by fearsome beasts and spectres and puppeteered by a skilled and ruthless master, his existence only ever indicated by an eye marked with three dots on the top and bottom. Young, foolish Olivia was able to escape by finding the thinnest of threads that led to the exit, but she had seen too much, and the puppet master had had his minions follow her out. With his strings everywhere, Olivia Colomar, wounded and terrified, was forced to seek refuge in the same cracks of society that she had been raised in.

It was there, tucked away in an overlooked corner of the world, that she called upon the philosophy that street life in Dorado had taught her right from the start. Sombra remembered it daily, let its guidance determine her every action. _Everything can be hacked, and everyone_. Olivia Colomar had been hacked, plain and simple, and against _La Conspiracion_ there was no room for error. _What do you do when you've been hacked?_ she had contemplated. The answer, it turned out, was simple. _Shut down, r_ _eboot the system, and come back better than before_.

A year later, from the hole that Olivia had crawled into to die like a beaten dog emerged Sombra, wiser, craftier, more elusive, and more dangerous than anything that the post-Crisis hacker culture had produced before. The world was taken by storm by her strings of corporate takedowns and scandalous leaks, but it was her more unnoticed actions that proved even more impactful.

The Conspiracy had taught Olivia a valuable lesson in that whoever had the information held all the cards, and it was something that Sombra had taken to heart. Each 'friend' gained behind closed doors was another card in her hand, another step towards finishing what a dead woman had started. Each alliance, each piece of blackmail, was a means towards the end. Talon had been her most lucrative means thus far; Very close to the center of _La_ _Conspiracion's_ web, uncannily so, and their own resources and connections meant that she had a long reach with regards to the collection and control of pieces.

She grinned lightly, her eyes still closed and her mind still reflecting. Tonight promised great things, and she would be there to collect.

Politics? _Meh. Bunch of pavos reales strutting around and flashing their feathers, mostly unaware of where the real power is. Akande's world, not mine_.

Reaper's vengeance and Widowmaker's bloodlust? _They've got enough edge to cut steel, and they're just_ _pawns_ _in the Dangerous Game. They've been hacked and they know it, but they don't see the strings tied around them_.

What she wanted was, again, simple. With nearly two hundred celebrities, politicians, corporate giants, scientific visionaries, and military leaders expected to die tonight, their secrets and assets, both of which she knew didn't need to be about someone living to be useful, would suddenly be treasures without a keeper, primed for her taking. Picking them up before the bodies were cold was insuring that they were in good hands. The Dangerous Game, after all, was not yet complete, and merely winning it wasn't going to be enough for the phoenix who had risen from Olivia Colomar's ashes.

"All points, this is Widowmaker. _La docteur et son petit copain_ are about to begin their speech. I am in position to initiate." Sombra's earpiece suddenly blared, rudely tearing her out of of her memories. She opened her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh.

"All undercover operatives have reported in as well. They won't be able to get off the stage." Reaper growled over the channel in response. "This is what we've been waiting for, so DON'T screw it up. As of right now, T-minus five minutes until EMP activation."

Sombra rolled her eyes and playfully smiled; He was funny when he was trying to be angry. "Sheesh, you couldn't get anyone else to do all the heavy lifting, Gabe?" she said.

"Lose the tone." Reaper barked. "You know your job, so do it. Mess up, and Doomfist is going to be the least of your problems."

Sombra smirked. _An empty threat. How cute._ "You just need to stop worrying, Gabe. You know I don't let you down."

"Except when you do. Reaper out." With that, the feed turned to static.

She pushed herself off of the heating unit, crossing her arms and shivering briefly as the heat that had radiated off the unit escaped into the cold night air and was annihilated under the barrage of rain droplets. A quick diagnostic of her implants showed everything to be ready to go on her command, but first, she had one other matter to take care of, lest Gabe never shut up.

Under her high-tech thermo-optic shroud, she was completely undetectable, nothing more than, fittingly, a shadow to any that tried to find her. This served especially well at this moment in the night because, as she turned to her left, her prey stood twenty feet away, oblivious to the danger that lurked.

Her eyes locked on her target. Her head lowered and she grinned with lethal anticipation. Her left hand flickered with purple energy as she softly and deliberately stepped forward towards her quarry, the unlucky prey of a ruthless predator from which there was no escape.

 _Now this, this will be worth my time._

* * *

"I don't want to have to do anything to you, but you're not doing yourself any favours. Just tell me what you know." Fareeha said, forcing down the irritation that had been rising within her for the past hour.

"Oh pa-leeze, I've got better plea bargains from the Yankee feds, and I know that don't sound like nothing, but just you wait 'til ya hear what they call us over there, eh Roady?" Junkrat cackled.

Before the maniac could say any more, he found himself face-to-face with the barrel of Fareeha's hand-held rocket launcher.

"It's been a long night and I'm out of patience, so just make this simple." she seethed. "What is Talon planning to do?"

Junkrat's eyes crossed and his neck stretched backwards until his head bumped against the concrete blocks. "W-well then, when you put it that way-" he squirmed, but before he could say anything else, he was elbowed in the ribs.

"Shut. Up." Roadhog grunted to his compatriot.

"Oi, don't you shut me up! I'm in the middle of..." Junkrat rotated his head back towards Faheera and eyeballed her scowling down at him, her finger wrapped around the trigger. "...A charming, friendly conversation over here with this lovely lady who's _definitely_ not going to rocket my arse to Tokyo? Please?" he mewled meekly.

Roadhog exhaled loudly in frustration. "The cash."

It took the fiery-haired rat a few seconds to take in what'd just been said; his attention was almost solely on the weapon pressing against his nose. "I mean, she's tall, s-smart, and definitely not going to kill m-oooooooh roight! Ahem, PISS OFF, ya oversized canary! Why don'tcha go jump off the roof!"

Before Fareeha could react to Junkrat's insults, she involuntarily dropped her weapon and her suit began to convulse and spasm. The wings on her armour folded in and dropped down and her helmet's heads-up display began to frazzle before making her wince as it shorted out in a blinding flash. She desperately tried to activate her boosters to escape, but her armour's strength had been completely sapped, the joints stiffened and the metal plates weighed her down like a cinderblock. She crumbled to the roof with a heavy clunk, the suit immobilized and sparking with lavender-tinted electricity.

"Fareeha to all points, mayday mayday! My armour's just been shut down by some kind of virus; I can't fly or move and all my weapons are offline. Requesting immediate backup!" There was no reply. "Fareeha to all points, please respond! Can you hear me? Anyone?!" Her tone grew desperate, but all she heard on the other side was static.

As she continued to attempt to contact her friends, she felt someone's foot step on her back. She tried to crane her neck upwards and behind to see who it was, but the locked joints on her suit kept her from rolling herself over. As she attempted to wrench herself free, the unseen attacker pushed her towards the roof's edge, inch by inch, the drop growing closer and closer.

Her mind raced. What could she do? She had to do something, anything, but she couldn't act with her suit entrapping her like a bird in a cage. As the attacker's foot pushed her closer to the edge, she could see over it down to the solid pavement, a hundred fifty feet straight down. A sheer drop and a sudden stop.

"Who's behind this? Show yourself!" she demanded. Her head was now dangling over the edge, the rest of her about to follow. "When I get out of this, you're in for a world of pain, Junkrat!"

"Oh, I ain't doing nothin' but enjoyin' the show right now; you still got me tied up here." he replied fiendishly. "But I'm pretty sure I know who's got you about to take a dive on ya pointy little nose, though."

"Who is it?" Her upper body was now balancing on the ledge like a seesaw, her head facing straight towards the ground. The attacker stopped for a moment, Fareeha literally hanging in the balance, to kick her rocket launcher over the edge as well. "Tell me!" she commanded to the rat.

"I said I know who it is, I don't recall sayin' I'd tell ya, now did I?" he giggled. "It seems to me like you gotta go now. Have a nice flight! Oh wait..." he mocked before laughing maniacally.

A bolt of lightning raced across the sky. Below her, Fareeha beheld a long shadow cast upon the ground, darkness poised to make a decisive strike. With a final push, she was sent over the roof edge entirely, falling like a brick and contorting uncontrollably before hitting the solid pavement with a hard, cracking thud.

Up above, the assailant materialized into sight, a lavender outline filled in to reveal Sombra. She leaned over the roof's edge to admire her work. Below, Fareeha lay stationary on the cracked ground, splayed out grimly.

"You were listenin' when I told her to jump off the roof, weren't ya?" Junkrat inquired with a giggle.

Sombra turned around to where the Junkers were handcuffed and strode up to them before crouching down next to them. "'You hook 'em, I'll cook 'em.'" she bantered.

Roadhog shot her an angry glare from under his mask immediately upon hearing her.

" _Relajarse_ , I was quoting you. You're not going all serious on me like Gabe, are you?" she said. At the same time, the lines along the glove on her left hand glowed bright purple, and three energy tendrils sprouted forth from her fingertips and reached behind Junkrat into the keyhole of the handcuffs. Within a few seconds, the shackles had been broken loose and the peg-legged psychopath jumped to his feet with the vigor of a free man. Within another few seconds, his pig-faced accomplice was similarly unleashed.

While they were celebrating their freedom, Sombra stood off to one side, looking mildly disinterested and running her hands through her soaked hair to keep it away onto her neural implants. "No need to thank me." she butted in sarcastically.

Junkrat strode over to her and leaned in close, close enough to where she could see the singes on his hair and the pointy nose on his rodent-like face was almost poking her. "So, we gonna get an advance on our paycheck or what? I don't really think this was a part a' the deal." he said, holding out an open prosthetic right palm and rubbing his thumb along his other four fingers.

Sombra put on a fake smile as she pushed the palm away with one hand and Junkrat's face with the other. "You getting a bit ahead, _mi amigo._ Sorry to tell you so late, but you getting caught was actually the plan. Not the _whole_ plan, but still." she said matter-of-factly.

Junkrat stood motionless for a moment, his beady eyes the size of oranges and his mouth agape. When he did manage to start chattering again, his movements were even more exaggerated than usual. "WHAT?! You mean, that you hired us, to get beat up by a bunch of tin can-huggers, _and we don't get to blow up a single bloody one of them?!_ " Behind him, Roadhog growled like an angry elephant, stomping her way with murderous intent.

"Hey, hey, _uno momento por favor_." she reasoned as she raised her hands in front of her defensively. "I'm just the messenger, but, I think I can sweeten the deal." She tilted her head and looked towards them with a suave expression.

The furious duo were paused in their tracks. Gradually, their heads swiveled in each others direction. Though they weren't saying anything, Sombra could see their eyes rotating back and forth between themselves and her. After a few seconds, Junkrat turned back towards her. "Alright, whaddaya got?" he said with cautious optimism.

Sombra grinned and raised an eyebrow. She held out her left hand and from it appeared an image of a large pile of guns, bombs, and other assorted weapons, all of them makeshift-looking and painted in the dusty yellow colours of the Junkers.

"All your gear is sitting fifty yards away next to a great big dropship inbetween the buildings; you can't miss it. In about..." she trailed off briefly as she summoned a second hologram with the time. "...Thirty seconds, those same Overwatch agents who beat you as well as about two hundred Omnics are going to be completely helpless. If you're quick, you'll get your choice before Gabe starts ordering you around. Just think of it like foxes in a henhouse."

As quickly as it arrived, Junkrat's incredulous rage disappeared, replaced by a toothy, ear-to-ear grin and wild-eyed delight. He shook wildly with exhilaration as he looked over at Roadhog. "Now that sounds good, don't it?"

The masked pig looked down on his partner, then at Sombra, then back at Junkrat, then at Sombra again. He was motionless for a moment before he nodded slowly with approval.

" _Excelente_ , good to see we're all on the same page. Now what're you waiting for? The Omnics aren't going to blow themselves up. ¡ _Ándale_! ¡ _Rapido_! Go!" she commanded hastily, shooing them off with a quick hand gesture and watching as the Junkers leaped from the rooftop and booked it towards their confiscated weapons.

Sombra chuckled. _Wily, dangerous, easy to hack_ , she mused to herself. _I think I'll keep them_.

With a sweeping motion, the holographic timer that she had called up was brought to front and center. The timer was on its last legs, the numbers counting down to the time of reckoning.

 **0:05**

She smiled with satisfaction. _Time's_ _not always on your side,_ chica.

 **0:04**

 **0:03**

With another hand wave, a second hologram was brought forth, this one showing a CGI image of the one and the one and a half-foot long cylinder that was on the verge of breaking the back of the peace of her time.

 **0:02**

Underneath the projection, Spanish text read that the EMP was ready for activation and was charging up to release its deadly package.

 **0:01**

 _Apagando las luces._

 **0:00**

She pressed a finger against the image of the EMP, which lit up with a purple-pink hue and changed the text below to say that the activation was successful. The rain-soaked perch she stood on overlooked the back of the palace, and from her angle she could see the lights of the ballroom chandeliers flicker and the ornate glass windows to the outside project her lavender-shaded electricity.

 _A job well done, if I do say so myself. But then again, it's not like I do anything less._

She then turned away from the view and placed two fingers on her earpiece.

"Oh Gabe, dinner's ready." she said in a sing-song tone. "You'll want to get there before Amelie steals all the good ones."

"About time. Get back to the ship and monitor the EMP. We'll be a while." Reaper hissed sadistically before cutting the channel.

Sombra beckoned her hologram back in front of her again. A quick study-over showed nothing out of the ordinary, meaning that she was finally able to get out of that god-forsaken rain that had soaked her jacket clean through and was probably waterlogging her implants. Before she could leave for the ship, she stopped for a second as something caught her eye. Off to the left in the distance, along the wall of the palace, she could see a trio of guards struggling with what looked to be a recently caught prisoner who, judging by the kangaroo kick she saw him administer, still had plenty of fight left in him.

Summoning forth another holographic panel, she brought it up to eye level and ran her fingers along the side in a semi-circle motion, as though she were adjusting the lenses on a pair of binoculars. Upon the magnification of the image, she believed she had seen the the face somewhere before. With the snap of her fingers, it came to her: The _gringo_ that Gabe hated so much, the same cowboy that she'd seen passed out at Calaveras on Christmas Eve a few years ago.

 _Should I?_ she pondered, wondering whether to inform Reaper of this one remaining errant adversary. It didn't take her long to choose an answer.

"Pfft, nah." _Might as well make it interesting or Gabe'll go soft. Plus,_ la rata y el cerdo _will_ _like playing with someone_ _feisty_.

With that, she crossed one arm over her chest and propped the other one's elbow on her hand as she de-pixellated with a flare of purple light, vanishing into thin air and reforming back inside the dimly-lit carrying compartment of the Talon dropship, where she leaned against a wall and smiled with a combination of snide self-confidence and assured triumph.

* * *

"...And though my reputation was made in times of war, I look forward to reaping the fruits of our labour, as the olive branch of peace grows outward and flowers all across the globe." orated an East Asian woman with lavish medals adorning her drab green uniform.

The room lit up with applause as she stepped back from the microphone stand and let Lucio take her place.

"Li Min-Seo, everybody; big round of applause for the general, whaddaya say?"

The crowd responded in exactly the way the night's MC expected them to, which coaxed a chuckle out of him. "Y'all been a great crowd, you know that? Without you I'd just be some guy tellin' bad jokes and trying to shamelessly promote my albums, know what I'm sayin?"

He stopped only long enough to take a breath. "Point is that you are all awesome, and you're all gonna live on forever for what you've achieved together. Y'all are the real heroes, and as a very good friend of mine puts it, 'heroes never die'."

The assembled dignitaries all stood to offer the most roaring applause of the night, as well as a chorus of cheers and whistles. Lucio promptly about-faced and backflipped over the mic stand before turning, taking a theatrical bow, and spreading his arms wide as though he were inviting more praise his way.

As the applause finally died down, the MC spoke up. "And speaking of which, how's about we cap off the night with some words from a couple a' good friends of mine? Please give it up for Doctor Angela Ziegler and Genji Shimada."

The spotlight that had followed Lucio's every move left his visage behind and shone upon the table that the doctor and the cyborg were sitting at. As the crowd gave them an ovation, Genji offered an arm to his date, which she graciously accepted before promptly tugging upon to lead him up the stage, pausing only when he snatched up her clutch and handed it over to her.

As they made their way up onto the stage and stepped into Lucio's place behind the mic stand, the congregated VIPs saw Angela, her dress glistening in the light, bring Genji in close and steal a kiss, a move met with an approving crescendo of cheers and whistles from those who saw it.

For Winston and Tracer, two of the witnesses who should have been happiest to see it, it was but a footnote. Their attention was being kept on the increasingly frantic search for Talon's endgame pieces.

"Have you tried McCree yet? He should have been back half an hour ago!" Tracer stated, angry but also concerned.

Winston's growing distress wasn't quite as panicky, manifesting instead as extreme focus. "Athena, status update."

"No signs of anything out of the ordinary, just as it was when you last asked twelve point six seconds ago." the computer hummed. "As well, Ms. Oxton has asked you to attempt to contact Jesse again." Despite the obvious agitation in the air, Athena sounded as level-headed as always.

The gorilla scientist, absorbed by the task of decrypting Talon's audio frequency, made only a shooing gesture and an uninterested grunt.

"Winston? Love? I know you're still there; I can see you. Have you gotten in touch with McCree?" Tracer asked again. Her distress was evident not only from her tone, but from her furrowed brow and racing heart.

Athena finally broke the tense pause. "I'm afraid that Jesse has not answered at all. Perhaps he smuggled out more cigarettes when he left?"

In response, Tracer picked up the carton, full save for a single spot, and held in front of the monitor that had been tasked with the face-cam from Gibraltar.

"That is indeed troublesome." the computer hummed, her A.I. programming now beginning to betray signs of worry in her voice.

"I'd call it more than that. Angela and Genji's speech is almost done and he's nowhere to be found. Widowmaker's got to make a move, now or never."  
Across the room, the couple had the crowd enthralled by their inspiring words as the drones silently buzzing overhead, still looking for the slightest indication of enemy action. As for their person of interest, the icy assassin continued to stare blankly at the stage from her seat, occasionally placing a finger on her earpiece to deliver and receive the same messages Winston was working to decipher.

"Perhaps I could try Fareeha's communications." Athena proposed. What should have been a simple patching-in, unfortunately, was not so, and the unusually long wait on her end let Tracer know exactly what was going on.

She slumped back into her chair, her eyes wide as could be and beads of stressful perspiration rolling down her forehead. She placed a hand over her face and ran it slowly through her hair. Her breaths became shallow and her heart pounded inside her chest as her face and extremities began to feel cold. Up above through the skylight, a clap of thunder and a streak of lightning tore across the sky, revealing the dark shadows lurking behind every corner and every being in the room. One in particular, Tracer could see, seemed to stretch out from outside the building, looking over the building and entering through the skylight to be seen only for a split second before returning to whatever unseen hiding place it was in, like a predator peering out of its hiding place just long enough to regain a bearing on its prey's position before returning to wait for the opportune moment.

She only let herself fall into this state of panic for an instant before a slow, stiff inhale and a rapid succession of eye-blinks brought her tenuously back to her senses and allowed her to place her focus on the camera drones again. With the remote, she swiveled the eye of one of the drones back over at the blue-skinned murderer of Mondatta, who had just now draped a light coat over herself. Looking into her unholy yellow eyes through the plastic hovering flies on the wall, Tracer saw the same focus, the same deadly, calculating precision, the same unwavering focus and buried desire clamoring to be released by the pull of the trigger and the spilling of blood, as that fateful night on the rooftops of King's Row.

The mild clattering of her nails on the control board's keys let Tracer know that her hands were shaking, a realization that, in turn, led to her recognizing the cold chill running down her spine, followed by the tears that were building up in her eyes and the deep-cut hurt that she saw in her reflection off a black screen on the panel.

 _No,_ she thought to herself. _Not again._

She reached underneath the table and pulled out the accelerator, going through the de-miniaturization process and loosening the harnesses without taking her eyes off the screens for a single instant.

Up front, Angela and Genji's speech was on its final words, the crowd hanging onto every one of them. With a final, triumphant proclamation of the arrival of a bright and prosperous future, they ended their address with the raising of their intertwined arms, hands grasped together as a powerful symbol to complement their words. These were met with the roaring approval of the entire audience, and Lucio even stepped forward to gesture for more praise to be sent their way.

A small, flickering red light on the panel alerted Tracer to Widowmaker's movement. In the raucous environment created by the long applause, the assassin slipped her way through the crowd, eyes front on the successful orators for whom the applause was for. Peering over at the Gibraltar screen again, Tracer saw Winston still tunnel-visioned on his work. As she tightened the harnesses on her accelerator, Athena piped up. "Ms. Oxton, why have you strapped on your chronal accelerator?"

"I'm sorry," she answered, her voice tinged with regret as she fastened the last of the harnesses and felt the centerpiece's glow turn radiant. "but we're out of time." With that, she was gone in a flash of blue.

"Winston!" Athena called urgently to the gorilla. "Winston, you must listen. Widowmaker is making her move and Ms. Oxton is pursuing!"

He didn't reply.

"Winston! Winston, answer me! Will you take your focus away from that stupid recording for one sec-"

Her words were cut off by the sudden sound of a French-accented whisper of a voice, purring over a scratchy intercom.

" _All points, this is Widowmaker. La docteur et son petit copain are about to begin their speech. I am in position to initiate._ "

" _All undercover operatives have reported in as well. They won't be able to get off the stage._ " a raspy growl that they were all unfortunately familiar with followed up.

Finally having cracked their codes, Winston finally allowed his intense concentration to lift its weight off his shoulders. He unfurled himself from the hunched-over position he had been in and rubbed his eyes gently. As he removed his hands, however, he both heard and caught sight of something that sapped the colour from his face almost instantly.

" _As of right now, T-minus five minutes until EMP activation._ " the growling voice stated. Underneath the wavelength, Winston saw what the time signature read:

 **Audio captured: 4 min 55 sec ago**.

With reflexes that neither he nor Athena knew he had, the gorilla activated Tracer's comm. "Lena, wait! It's a trap! Lena? _Lena!_ " Despite his desperate shouts, there was no answer. Tracer's concentration was solely on her enemy, the evil witch who had stolen hope from her home with a single action and threatened to steal it from the entire world. As she weaved through the cluster of VIPs, she closed in on a clearing right at the foot of the stage, where Widowmaker now stood, dropping the overcoat and reaching for what could only be one thing, Tracer knew. With a brilliant blue streak, she lunged forth and tackled the assassin to the ground just as she was about to attack.

"Where is it? Where's the gun?" Tracer demanded as she applied her weight onto one knee squarely on her opponent's back and twisted an arm behind her back. "Why are you doing this?!" she yelled. Behind her, the crowd gasped in shock and repulsed in fear. On the stage, Genji, Angela, and Lucio were similarly surprised, but Angela kept a strong grip on her clutch, strong enough that she, nor the other two, saw the security guards stationed around the doors running for the stage.

Widowmaker, though trapped underfoot, laughed derisively as she raised her free hand. Before Tracer could grab a hold, she opened it to reveal nothing more than thin air. "Just as foolish as ever, _cheri_." she whispered.

Before Tracer could ask what she meant by that, her question was answered by a sharp, stabbing agony that ran through her chest. She could see arcs of blue energy shooting from the accelerator in front of her, while up on the stage, Genji crashed to the floor, writhing grotesquely as his mechanical joints short-circuited and sparked with electricity. On the stage, Angela knelt by his side, fighting back terrified tears so that she could tend to him. Lucio rushed to her side to assist in whatever way he could, but as he looked back up he found himself squeezing his eyes closed and shaking his head from side to side rapidly, wanting more than anything to get out the horrifying sight of two hundred spasming and sparking Omnics crumpling into their chairs and onto the floor that had been burnt into his eyes.

* * *

"Winston, massive energy fluctuation detected! Consistent with..." Athena stumbled over the words, almost afraid to say them for fear of their meaning. "an electro-magnetic pulse."

He didn't react with the fear or desperate action that she expected from him; For that matter, he didn't react at all. It was as though Winston had frozen solid, eyes wide and jaw agape. Slowly, he raised one trembling hand and placed it on the side of his face for a split second before tightening it into a fist and driving it into the wall next to him with an anguished scream. As he drew his hand back from the hole that had been created, his head drooped downwards and his face stiffened, his teeth baring and his eyelids tightening together with both anger and despair, trying to hide from Athena what his sobs and heaving shoulders were making evident.

From her screen on the Gibraltar console, Athena bore witness to the gorilla's breakdown.

"I know what you are thinking, Winston, and you are wrong." Her computerized voice was both compassionate and urgently firm. "Ms. Oxton nor any other agent at that palace will quit so long as they still draw breath, and until such time we will not have failed. You know that and we both know that they are still alive; her and Master Shimada both have auxiliaries that will allow them to survive for a brief while longer, but we must act quickly."

Winston slowly peered up at the screen on the console. All of the camera feeds were dead, turned to snow and static by the EMP.

"As long as Overwatch is still alive, Doctor Harold's ideals will be carried on." Athena told him, her voice dropping low.

Winston took in a long, deep breath as he cleared off his glasses and sat back up straight. A second later, his fingers were a blur at the keyboard, typing in commands furiously.

"I'll activate the emergency anchor on the accelerator. Initiate a Code Epsilon Blue Ten-Seventeen and shut down that EMP." he commanded, determination fueling his words and actions.

"Code acknowledged. Beginning full reboot process." the computer replied, her screen turning from her stylized "A" to lines of code rapidly scrolling across the screen.

* * *

When Tracer came to, she was on her stomach. Pain ached through every part of her body, her chest area in particular feeling like she had been stabbed through the heart with a jagged blade. As her vision cleared and the pain began to slightly subside, she brought her hands up to her shoulders and pushed herself up to a half-lying down, half-sitting position, an action that was completely counterproductive to relieving the piercing agony she was in.

As she strained her head upwards and to her right, she saw that the security guards that had been standing sentry all night had moved in on the stage, besetting upon Angela and Lucio, tearing the lifesaving clutch out of the doctor's hand and throwing it to the back of the stage, and restraining them with submission holds and rifles pointed at their heads.

Tracer silently cursed herself for not thinking that the guards could be in on the plan, but her thoughts were cut off by a throbbing headache. As she brought her head to look over in the other direction, her curses became audible as she bore witness to the countless dead Omnics littering the ballroom. By this point, the human guests had cleared the room, running off in a state of mass hysterical panic.

Before she could muster what was left of her strength and try to stand, Widowmaker's boot stamped down on her head, the high heel digging into her skull as she was forced back down onto the ground.

As she wiped the last of the pale makeup off her face with a cloth, the cold-blooded murderer bent downwards with unnatural flexibility. "You and your friends were close," she whispered boastfully in Tracer's ear. "but you were never going to win. There was simply no chance."

At the same time, a jet-black cloud of mist materialized on the stage, swirling in a spiral shape as a form took figure in the center of it. As the mass dissipated into the air, out stepped Reaper, his arrival met with a roar of thunder, the loudest that the storm had produced all night. He immediately reached into his overcoat and produced Widowmaker's sniper rifle before tossing it to her.

Turning to see his prey, Reaper walked silently, deliberately towards where Genji lay, turning his eyeless, evil gaze off him as so to watch Angela thrash in her captor's grasp.

"Now," he said with cruel pleasure while drawing a shotgun and pointing it at his prey underfoot. " _Let's get to work_."


	9. Chapter 9: Last Gasps

Everything was right in the world.

Reaper stood triumphant on the stage in the ballroom, holding a shotgun to the short-circuiting body of Genji, who was desperately trying to clamber up the microphone stand and use it to hold himself upright. Reaper knew he had won, utterly crushed Overwatch's pathetic efforts to stop the plan, and now it was time to collect his prize. The plan had gone practically without a hitch; The EMP had activated, the human crowd had panicked and scrambled for the exits, and the 'security guards' had played their part perfectly, preventing the doctor or anyone else from making a last-ditch effort and readying them for his arrival. It was a job well done, and he deserved a just reward. At long last, some of the most elusive names on his list were going to be crossed off and he wanted to relish every moment of it.

Taking his attention off of his prey, Reaper surveyed the carnage he had wrought. The Omnic dignitaries were sprawled out across the room, either face-first on their tables or on the floor with splayed limbs. Five feet to his left, four of his hitsquad had the right arm of Angela wrenched behind her back and on one knee, assault rifles to her head. Next to her another three men were holding Lucio at gunpoint. At the foot of the stage, Widowmaker had the annoying little brat known as Lena Oxton, aka Tracer, pinned to the ground, the barrel of her sniper rifle pressing down through the Overwatch agent's messy hair and onto her skull. He didn't need to worry about where Faheer was; he'd seen her trying and failing to pick herself up off the pavement as he'd entered the building. As for his other associates on the mission, Sombra was maintaining the EMP remotely, while the Junkers had likely taken the money and run.

The revenant took in the macabre spectacle around himself and breathed deeply. A surge of adrenaline pumped through his black veins and if he'd had a heartbeat, it would have been racing at a mile a minute. Sombra had been right earlier; half of Overwatch, perhaps even more, was here, ripe for the taking. He turned his attention back to Genji and twice kicked the cyborg ninja hard in the gut, causing him to scream in pain and reel into the fetal position at the bottom of the mic stand. He then turned his helpless prey over with his foot so that he was staring up at the ghostly mask of his soon-to-be murderer. Before he could pull the trigger, he heard Angela scream.

"No!" she cried out, tears in her eyes and desperation in her heart as she struggled to free herself from her captors' grip. Reaper glanced up and upon seeing her trying to wrestle herself free, he laughed a sick, raspy cackle.

"Enjoying the view?" he asked her rhetorically, knowing it would evoke the response he wanted.

"You evil, sadistic monster!" she screamed viciously.

He laughed again. "You haven't seen the half of it. Why don't I show you what I mean?"

He turned his head over to Widowmaker, who looked to be savoring the high of victory same as he was. "Fire on my mark." he ordered calmly. He then turned towards the squad guarding Lucio and repeated his order before turning back to Angela. Her look was an odd combination of anger and utter terror, the kind born when everything you've ever cared about is on the brink of annihilation, something he was intimately familiar with. He reveled in her emotions, letting it fuel him, sustain him. He anticipated just how broken she'd be seeing her friends slain in cold blood as she stood powerl-

His celebration was cut short by a sudden thought, an unsettling notion that his victory wasn't quite assured yet. For a moment, he stood frozen in place like a deer in the headlights. A quick visual survey around the room confirmed it: Widowmaker had reported five agents in the ballroom, yet there was only four; Tracer, Angela, Genji, and Lucio. McCree was nowhere to be found.

His mood turned to frustration, Reaper knew he had to find him, but where the hell was he?! He turned his attention off of Genji for a moment and stormed towards Angela. He punched her straight in the mouth, splitting her lip and drawing blood, and placed the barrel of his shotgun under her chin. "Where's McCree?!" he hissed.

Angela said nothing, only glaring back with an unchanging, hate-filled expression. After a second of silence, she spat onto the face of her interrogator, spraying drops of blood under the right eye of his pale mask.

Resisting the urge to tear her head clean off for this slight, he stepped back and wiped the specks of crimson fluid off his face. "So that's how it's going to be, is it?" he rasped as he lowered his gun back at Genji. Reaper was about to finish him off when the question of McCree's location was answered, but not by Angela.

The crack of a revolver permeated through the room and six bullets came to rest in six targets. Two of the men holding Angela were dropped instantly, the heads of another two holding Lucio jerked back before their bodies collapsed, and the guns of both Reaper and Widowmaker were both torn out of their hands as though they were tied to a high-speed train.

The surviving gunmen all rapidly strained their heads like meerkats in the direction of the shots. Their distraction allowed Angela and Lucio to free themselves from the entrapping grasps they were in and engage their adversaries hand-to-hand, as their usual tools were either disabled by the EMP or not available to them due to their plainclothes attire. While neither of the two of them was a dedicated combatant and the former was disgusted by violence, Angela knew the gravity of the situation called for her to defend herself and she, like all other agents from the Golden Age, had been formally trained in martial arts. Lucio, while lacking formal training, had combined the agility his hard-light skates had needed for him to use properly with street fighting from the uprising against Vishkar in Rio, giving him an acrobatic style with a practical emphasis.

As the two of them worked to dispatch the thugs, Widowmaker leaped into the air, twirling gracefully before landing behind a nearby table that she promptly flipped over to serve as a shield against further gunfire. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Lucio had rendered his remaining goon unconscious and was sprinting for the back of the stage. At stage left, just under the bigscreen, she could make out the object that the night's M.C. had a beeline on: Angela's clutch.

Picking up a knife from the floor next to her upset table, she threw it at Lucio, who only just caught a glimpse of it before being forced to slide on his knees in order to save himself from being speared. An opportunity created, Widowmaker took off towards her rifle, which had landed a few feet away from her current position after McCree's arrival. Upon retrieving it, she unleashed a flurry of bullets in its assault configuration at Lucio, who dove behind the curtains on stage left to keep from being riddled with gunfire.

Simultaneously to Widowmaker's reaction, Reaper dissolved into a swirling cloud of black mist and shot towards McCree's position like a bat out of hell, stopping to reform and draw his shotguns fifteen feet from the door that McCree stood in. By the time he was in position, the cowboy had just finished reloading his revolver and was pointing its smoking barrel at the villain who had closed the distance on him, creating a standoff between the two. They circled each other as lightning from the rainstorm outside revealed the long shadows they cast.

Reaper scoffed. "Still can't stay out of trouble, can you?"

"Always was a slow learner." McCree replied snarkily.

"And now it's going to be the death of you."

"Not if you keep sendin' your lackies to do it. Kowalski's just as dumb as I remember him."

"Oh, they weren't going to kill you. You're all mine tonight."

With that, he opened fire on McCree, who combat-rolled to avoid the opening shots and countered by throwing a flashbang grenade that had been tucked into one of the internal pockets of his jacket. With his old enemy momentarily blinded by the dazzling flash, McCree let off another volley of shots, all of which were directed at Reaper. However, instead of making impact and doing what would have been fatal damage to virtually anyone else, the bullets simply passed through as though their target was merely a ghostly illusion. Seeing the futility of his shots, McCree darted for a nearby pillar, one of several that dotted the ballroom. As his intangible assailant pursued him and sent out shot after shot his way, he dashed from pillar to pillar, attempting to keep ahead like a gazelle being run down by a cheetah.

* * *

In Gibraltar, Winston and Athena were in full emergency mode, furiously making attempts to save their friends.

"Athena, I've anchored Lena down. How's it going on your end?" Winston barked.

"Emergency reboot of all Overwatch systems in Versailles will be complete in approximately four minutes." Her own digital voice also tinged with fear for the team.

"Can you shave any time off of that? The auxiliary stabilizer on the accelerator will run out of power in three and a half!" he said frantically.

"I could redirect the heat sink on the EMP itself and bypass the router that's giving off the pulse, but someone or something is running interference. It will take time to complete this alone."

"I'll work on countering, you keep up the reboot." With that, he minimized the chronal accelerator monitor on his computer and, with a few taps on the keyboard, accessed the mainframe of the EMP and called up a schematic of its software onscreen. The codes that were flashing across the image were constantly changing; with each attempt that Athena made to besiege it, the digital wall held and rebuilt for the next assault. He spent the next moment looking over the cross-section before typing commands into the computer at lightning speed. Soon, Winston had created a distraction program against the software, a deception that was designed to keep whatever system or hacker that was stopping Athena occupied so that the reboot could relieve the beleaguered heroes.

* * *

At the palace, Lucio was still pinned down by Widowmaker's spray of assault rifle fire. With bullets racing past him on both sides, he found himself wrapped in a cold sweat and his heart about to burst out of his chest. He'd joined Overwatch almost six months ago, but had never actually been on a mission such as this. He'd known what he had signed up for, but he had almost expected that it wouldn't be quite so perilous. For a former freedom fighter, getting shot at was nothing new, but the stakes were higher than just reclaiming a neighbourhood or defacing Vishkar; for the first time, Lucio had what could potentially have been the fate of the world on his shoulders, and to say the least, it was getting to him.

Quickly glancing around the edge of the curtains and the structure that was guarding him from Widowmaker's bullets, He saw that Angela was working on her own goons, while McCree was locked in a firefight with Reaper. He also saw that his attacker, while keeping up a volume of fire, was advancing on his position. Lucio knew he had to act quickly. To calm his nerves, he slowed his breathing to a whisper and closed his eyes. He focused himself on the task at hand. Adrenaline surged through his veins as he mentally pumped himself up.

 _This could be the last show_ , he thought to himself. _A_ _nd if it is, well... at least I made it one helluva night._ In his mind, he visualized a familiar sight; A roaring crowd in front of his stage, all chanting " _Lucio! Lucio! Lucio!"_ This was his time, the night of nights. He'd rocked the crowd midway through the gala, and now it was time to close the night with an encore.

Taking in a deep breath, he dropped the jacket and bowtie of his tuxedo and combat-rolled from behind the curtain and off stage left. Widowmaker's shots followed as well, forcing Lucio to duck behind a pillar. She ran in to flank her prey, but he was waiting for her. As she rounded the pillar, Lucio landed a hard right hook to the assassin's cheek which staggered her back. He then jumped at her and tried to land a two-legged flying kick, but Widowmaker hadn't been as dazed by the surprise as he had anticipated. Before his feet could make impact on her face, she grabbed one of his legs and redirected his momentum, sending him flying off into a clear area by the door that led out to the rest of the palace, on the opposite end of the entrance that McCree had used.

As Lucio picked himself up from the throw, both his and her eyes locked on the door, then on each other. A second later they were both bolting for the exit. With a series of precise leaps, flips, and twirls over the tables that were in her way, she rapidly closed the distance on Lucio and was ready to intercept. As she raised her rifle, he made a feint to the left, jumped upward, and raised his legs to catch the wall as it came towards him. This series of motions put him in a position to propel himself back at her like a torpedo. She saw this coming, however, and contorted her upper body to one side to avoid it. She would have done so easily had he not been aiming for the floor.

Just before Lucio's face collided with the ground, he twisted his upper body upwards, arching his back in a U-shape. This way, his chest took the brunt of the impact while not losing much speed. The momentum from his wall launch slid him along the ground and right between Widowmaker's legs, tripping her as he went through. As he skidded to a stop and picked himself up off the ground, he looked back at his attacker, who was recovering from the unexpected maneuver.

"You mind if I send the bill to you guys? I kinda think this shirt is trashed." he joked as he studied over his torn and wrinkled dress shirt. No sooner had he said this when she had grabbed her rifle again. Lucio, still in a state of overconfidence, didn't react until he heard the staccato rat-ta-tat of her shots and winced in pain, clutching his upper left arm. When he removed his hand, he could see blood smeared on his fingers and palm. He didn't have any more time to try to assess the injury; Standing still would invite more accurate fire his way. Trying to keep his left arm as still as possible, he took off in the direction of the open dance floor at the back of the room, with the assassin in hot pursuit.

Back on the stage, Angela was just finishing off the two remaining goons that Reaper had sic'ed on her. With a judo throw of one thug and a swift kick to another's groin, they were sent down for the count. Her immediate threats dealt with, Angela's adrenaline dropped and her mind cleared somewhat. Her eyes looked around at the scene in the ballroom and it was almost too much for her to comprehend. When the EMP had first been set off, she had seen the Omnic guests spasm and spark in uncontrollable agony, but she hadn't been taken in by the horror; She'd brought along her clutch for this very reason. Now, however, with Widowmaker bearing down on a tired Lucio and McCree running out of cover to use against Reaper's wrath in the backdrop, the effect sunk in, twisting her very soul, eating away at her conscience and fixing her on the spot with a thousand-yard stare on her face.

Angela found her mind running through the same words over and over again. _Why_? she thought. _Why did it have to be here? Why now? Why like this?_ She realized that the destruction laid out before her was not born of hatred or ideological difference, but instead was the product of cold, unfeeling callousness, planned as a piece of greater designs.

More thoughts raced through her head. _Overwatch has failed. I have failed. Has peace failed as well? Has peace ever succeeded?_ As her emotions frayed and her knees were about to buckle, her eyes, unlocked from their stare as they filled with tears, saw Genji and Tracer on the floor. Though the two were barely alive, they clung to it with Herculean strength, summoning every last ounce of left in them to try and stand up, to fight off the icy embrace of death.

Seeing this, her mind paused its doubts and fears; There was work to do and friends to save. Drying her eyes, she turned around and looked for where her clutch had fallen. In a matter of seconds, she spotted it at the back of the stage, surrounded by bullet holes. With a gasp of hope surging inside her, she sprinted back, picked up the clutch, and removed her collapsible staff inside.

Angela, however, did not act unseen. Widowmaker, in the midst of trying to gun down Lucio, caught a glimpse of Angela as she herself maneuvered to keep up with the Brazillian M.C.'s speed.

" _La docteur_ has her staff. I can end her." she said into her earpiece as, with the press of a button, the barrel of her rifle extended and the scope raised into its active position.

"No." Reaper ordered, himself still hunting down McCree. "Focus on your current problem. She doesn't pose a threat right now."

"Affirmative." Widowmaker answered before returning to her chase.

Simultaneously, Angela's staff extended from an inch long to three feet once she had removed it from her clutch. As she held it above her head out over the edge of the stage towards the tables, a feeling of triumph surged within her. In spite of Reaper's sadistic gloating and the suffering of those closest to her, she knew that she had won. She knew that now was her time to shine, that Omnic peace would finally be reached, that no one would die at the hands of evil again and bring sorrow to those left behind.

Only it didn't happen.

As Angela activated the Cadeuceus Staff, it didn't shimmer with its usual golden glow, which indicated that the nanobiotic technology within was operational. Rather, it gave off an electric frazzle before projecting a small holographic image of a lavender-coloured sugar skull. Angela's feeling of triumph was vapourised, replaced by a mixture of shock and terror. After several seconds of desperately trying and failing to activate the staff, she threw it aside in tearful aggravation and sunk to her knees. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't save you." she whispered, her words obscured by the hand that she held over her face to conceal her sobs. Her mourning, however, was cut short when a high-pitched, Australian-accented voice yelled out from seemingly nowhere.

" _FIRE IN THE HOLE_! _"_ was what she heard only an instant before the skylight of the ballroom was shattered by what looked to be a spinning tire, the wheel lined with large spikes and giving off the sound of a lawn mower engine as it raced straight for her. She barely had a moment to pick herself up and try to drag Genji behind the microphone stand before the tire exploded on the stage, destroying it in and sending debris, smoke, and fire across the ballroom. At the other end, McCree, Reaper, Lucio, and Widowmaker all momentarily paused and turned towards the carnage before resuming their battles.

As Angela dug herself and Genji out of the wreckage, she found her vision blocked by the smoke from the explosion. She raised her hand to wipe her eyes clean, but doing so only made them sting from the dust and debris she was covered with. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to clean out the filth, the horror. As her vision cleared up, she saw that Genji was lying beside her in a relatively clear area, his robes shredded by the blast and his faceplate and visor cracked and covered with the same grime and grit that had dirtied her dress and hands. Four feet away, Tracer was still on the ground. She had been beneath the explosion and partially shielded by the stage's structure, but the wreckage had pinned her down and she was squirming like a creature caught in some terrible trap.

As for the staff, all Angela saw left of it was a small sliver, a fragment of the metallic insides that had been meant to conduct the nanobiotics and produce a steady beam of healing energy. Now, there was virtually nothing, the single part far beyond any chance of repair. Upon seeing the shard and picking it up, Angela was rendered still for a moment, slack-jawed in distress, her mind frantically combing every possible way to undo it until all avenues were exhausted and the realization that the staff had failed entered her reasoning. In a moment of pained fury, she tossed the bit as far away as she could and turned to her injured teammates.

She rolled the cyborg ninja on his back and checked to see if he was still breathing. After confirming it and clearing a few nearby pieces of debris, she crawled over to where Tracer was, cleared off the debris, and similarly checked her vitals. From this spot further forward from the explosion's ground zero, the smoke and dust was clearing up, meaning that Angela could see the arrival of the dangerous new opponents. Dropping from the now-open skylight and onto the ballroom floor, Junkrat and Roadhog stood in a ready pose, armed to the teeth with bombs and other lethal metal devices and slightly dampened from the rain. A crack of lightning flashed above them, showing the former's wide, toothy grin, wild eyes, and fiery hair and the latter's massive metal hook and black, scarred gas mask in crystal clarity for Angela to see.

"Oi, Roady!" Junkrat said to his menacing accomplice. "That Mexican chick said we'd have a big fat pile o' Omnic wankers to blast the beJeesus out of, but come on, they're all dead before I could even scrap one of 'em!" The scrawny maniac gestured around to the Omnics who were still sitting lifeless in their seats. Roadhog, as per usual, said nothing, only staring back at Junkrat through the black goggles of his mask.

"OK, so I slowed us down a bit, but you gotta admit that you wanted ta blow somethin' up after those two bitches kicked our arses!"

Roadhog still gave no response, but this time he tilted his head up and looked ahead at the destroyed stage.

Junkrat continued to yammer on while gesturing wildly. "Yeah yeah, we're gettin' paid to 'distract' 'em, but you can't just go to all this trouble and NOT have the explosions to show for-" His tirade was cut short as Roadhog lifted his left arm and pointed his hook ahead of himself, directly at Genji, who was attempting to roll over off the floor with obvious difficulty, and Angela, who had just finished confirming that Tracer had survived the blast.

"Hey! Earth to Roadhog? What're ya pointing at you big tub of-oooooooooooh..."

Junkrat turned in the direction that his pig-faced partner in crime was pointing and, upon seeing Genji trying to move, locked his eyes on him in a psychotic stare and giggled maniacally. "Looky here, there's one left, eh?" He next noticed Angela, who had also seen the two Junkers standing in the middle of the floor. Knowing why they were here, she had placed herself between them and Tracer in a defensive stance.

"And a pretty sheila to boot." he said wickedly. He looked over at Roadhog. "Think it's my turn to call dibs."

Roadhog didn't reply, only swiveling his head back in the direction of his skinny, peg-legged compatriot.

"Ugh, fine, it's your turn. Ya know, maybe I wouldn't care so much about it if you didn't always ramble on and on about everything!"

This time, Roadhog nodded in response and pitched his hook towards Angela with mammoth force. She ducked to avoid it and ran for the nearest table, hoping to use it as cover, but the momentum of her right leg was stopped almost immediately, taking her off balance and causing her to nearly fall face-down. As she regained her footing, she noticed a white-hot pain stabbing through her leg as though her shin had been snapped in two. She cried out in pain as the excruciating feeling traveled up her leg and through her body. She looked down at her feet and saw the cause of this; a steel bear trap, locked around her leg in a bloody embrace.

"Oh you really stepped in it mate!" Junkrat cackled. Before Angela could reply or try to free herself, she was yanked forward with the speed and force of being hit by a car on the highway. She was finally brought to a stop, on her knees, at Roadhog's feet, who now towered over her like a colossus. Another surge of pain raced through her, bringing further streams of tears from her eyes. She opened her mouth to scream, but no words came out, her breath taken away by the shock and the agony. She looked down at where the pain was most intense and saw the tip of the hog's metal hook protruding from her abdomen and a growing red stain on her white dress.

As she coughed out more blood and struggled to take in a breath of air, she looked up at Roadhog, who stared back down at her, his gas mask giving him a menacing, soulless look. He wrenched the chain of the hook in his hand, bringing Angela up to eye level with him and making her grimace in pain as he stared at her through his mask. His victim in hand, the hog wheezed and laughed a deep, sick belly laugh. Junkrat meanwhile, giggling with manic glee, strode up to Genji through the smoke and debris and placed a baseball-sized bomb on the cyborg ninja's chest before stepping back and readying a remote detonator.

At the same time as this, McCree had finally run out of pieces of cover to dash between like a rabbit on the run from a hungry wolf. As he turned to throw another flashbang at Reaper, a pair of shots from the latter's weapons tore through the cowboy's metal arm, perforating it with holes, exposing the wiring inside, and completely tearing off the hand with the not-yet-activated flashbang still gripped inside. He raised his revolver hand and readied to fire off a volley, but Reaper lunged forth in a cloud of black mist and heave-kicked him square in the chest, sending McCree careening back onto the floor. As he tried to pick himself off the floor and reach for his revolver, he felt Reaper's hand wrap around his throat, squeezing his windpipe shut as he was picked up off the floor and had one of his attacker's shotguns shoved against his forehead.

Meanwhile, Lucio had still been playing a desperate game of chase with Widowmaker, but on the open floor he had little by way of cover to avoid her bullets, and the blood loss from his arm combined with his constant acrobatics was beginning to leave him feeling disoriented. He leaped into the air and barrel-rolled to avoid a spray of shots, but upon trying to land, he lost his footing and tumbled head over feet on the hardwood floor.  
As he finally came to a halt and tried to get up, he found he couldn't tell whether the floor was under him, up where the roof should be, or somewhere between. He tried to refocus his vision and regain his sense of balance, but was sent crashing down again by a swift kick to the head that left a long gash on his forehead. As his eyes began to produce a clear image again, the first thing that he could see was the extended barrel of her sniper rifle an inch away from his face, the rifle's owner standing over him with a stone-cold look on her face.

Tracer, meanwhile, was undergoing the slow process of regaining consciousness. The past several minutes, almost everything between when she'd tackled Widowmaker to the floor and now had blurred together. The biting pain of her accelerator as it sparked like an arc welder, Widowmaker's boot crunching down on her spine, the rumble of thunder outside, the crack of gunshots, the high-pitched growl of the tire engine, it all seemed to her that it had happened in the same instant. When the tire exploded, the world had gone from everything at once to each second seeming to last an eternity.

As Tracer began to lift herself off the floor again, she could see everything in the ballroom with intense detail. On the right of the ballroom stood Reaper holding McCree by the throat, ready to end him with a single shot. On the left, Widowmaker stood over Lucio, about to gun him down. In the middle, directly in front of her, Junkrat stood giggling like a lunatic over Genji and Roadhog was holding Angela by the metal hook that had impaled her.

Even now, however, Tracer knew she had to stand, had to fight, had to have hope. Even now, there was still a chance. She looked down at her watch, which was synced to her accelerator. Upon seeing it, she gasped.

The battery indicator and auxiliary stabilizer both had the same level: Zero.

A chill ran down her back and her body began to feel light, as though she could lift herself off the ground and float around like a leaf on a gust of wind. A look of undiminished dread crept across her face; She knew exactly what was happening. She lifted her hand to where she could see it, only she couldn't. Her hand had turned transparent, leaving only a faint blue outline that itself was fading fast. This transparency was slowly crawling its way up her arm and she knew that soon, it would consume her, leaving her in the state of ghostly disassociation she'd feared for over ten years now.

" _Lena_."

She almost thought she could hear Winston's voice, calling out to her. Her memory flashed back to the other times she had skirted death and he had frantically reached into the void after her; the Slipstream, the Doomfist fight in Singapore. Despite her lifelines being shattered and her detachment from time itself, she had been able to hear the faint cries of her friend as he struggled to bring her back in reality.

" _Lena_!"

This time, Winston was louder, louder than what she had remembered hearing during her times in the abyss. It almost seemed like it was coming from somewhere else, somewhere outside her own mindscape. Strangely as well, her sense of lightness was fading, her body gaining a feeling of heft again.

"LENA!"

This time, she knew the voice was from elsewhere, but since the EMP had shut down her comlink as well, she didn't know where until it hit her. She looked down at her hand again to see it reform out of the blue light that had consumed it.

"Lena, get ready!"

 _Winston, you did it again,_ she thought.

At the same time, she heard a sudden sound. It was quiet at first, coming from outside the ballroom, but grew quickly to a roar as it drew near. This sound was joined by others, smaller and with more of a whir to them, but much closer. Tracer's fear turned to confidence in an instant; These were sounds she was familiar with, and they meant victory.


	10. Chapter 10: Intervention

Fareeha Amari didn't need a damage report to tell her that she hurt like hell.

As well as the constant aching that came from an uncontrollable fall from fifteen stories up in a metal suit, there was the screaming agony that her right arm was giving off every time she tried to wiggle it around in the minimal room that the Raptora armour gave between its chassis and the pressurized body glove she had on underneath.

 _Broken. Shit. At least that seems to be the only thing_. Though she was largely sure of that notion, there was still a worrisome degree of uncertainty to it, what with her armour still being completely immobilized. _Aside from this stupid piece of junk._

The only thing that she had even a limited amount of control over was her head movement. Despite the large crack in her visor and the headache she had from getting her bell rung, her senses were still clear enough; the constant discomfort and groans they forced out of her were grim proof of that. From her position on her side, she craned her head upwards, rainwater running out from where it had pooled in where her visor ended and around her helmet's chinstrap, and rotated it over her shoulder, a process that proved more painstaking than anticipated with her helmet weighing her ringing head down. Though unable to look far enough over to see the ledge she had been sent careening off, she didn't care about that because of what was in her field of view in front of her.

Off to her left, just visible if she stretched her neck back as far as she could past the palace wall and garden decorations and peered past an old marble sculpture, was the bright lights of the outside entrance to the ballroom, sitting less than a hundred yards away. Through the constant pattering of rain and the occasional thunderclap, she could hear the sounds of tables being upset and guns firing, a few of their rounds whizzing through the glass. She muttered several expletives in Arabic as she came to the realization that not only had she been ambushed, but everyone else had as well. She had to get into the fray to fix this crisis and do so posthaste.

Even with her putting all the strength she had into moving, doing so still proved impossible. Whomever had attacked her had been sure to make no mistakes, and as a result moving even her feet or splayed legs so much as an inch was like trying to trying to move Everest with only her pinky. It would have been extremely difficult even if her every body part wasn't providing fresh updates to her nerves on how much the fall had hurt. Lifting herself up into a better position with her arms was a good idea, she had decided, but with one arm trapped under her suit's weight and the other fractured, it was an idea quickly discarded. Trying to roll onto her back proved ineffective as well because of her suit's rocket wings, which propped her in place.

As her endeavour to achieve a more workable position continued, she heard something that was even more uncomfortable than her position and its accompanying helplessness. Though she couldn't see it through the night's black veil and the downpour, she could hear, clear as day, Junkrat shouting " _FIRE IN THE HOLE!"_ , followed up by the crashing of glass and an explosion that shook the ground she lay upon. The thought of that psychopathic demolitionist and his monstrous muscle having at anyone inside was enough to triple her movement efforts and warrant more audible curses.

Even with desperate adrenaline forcing her to carry on, she was able to do little more than roll over onto her stomach straight into a large puddle that splashed up into her face. Through her numerous disadvantages and the added unpleasant feelings of water up her nose and gravel stuck in her teeth, she forced herself to persevere, to summon enough drive to try to break the trappings of what served as a cage for a normally free bird.

Even with her every, pounding fibre of her being saying she needed to find some way to break her bondings, dark reality was casting its shadow on her. With each attempt at movement, even the tiniest, wormlike inching, failing utterly, doubt and despair began battering down her mental state. The gunfire had stopped by now, leaving an dreadful silence in the air. The only thing she could hear was the clatter of the rain on her armour.

Fareeha's head dropped downwards, the hair on her forehead wetting as water from the puddle trickled into her helmet. The pain of the impact was now beginning to subside save for her arm, the vacuum that nature abhors being filled with the unsavory truth. Her friends, the people and organization that had practically raised her and that she dreamed of working with her whole life, were about to die in the ballroom at Versailles, surrounded by a terrible monument to a final, devastating failure.

As a child, she had seen the times when Overwatch had failed, from the fiasco in Paraguay to the seeming death of her mother to Reyes' betrayal and the Battle of Geneva, but it had never taken the dream from her, the desire to follow in her mother's footsteps and join their proud ranks. Now, however, with her mechanical wings clipped and the consequences of Talon's superior preparedness taking effect, the unhappy actuality was all too prevalent. Her extremities grew limp as the notion settled in. Ironic, she thought, that the suit that had given her an advantage so many times would be her demise.

It was then that what seemed like divine intervention kicked in.

Completely out of the blue, the armour that had promised to be her tomb released its frozen joints. The wings on the back came alive with the squeal of hydraulics and the coughing of rocket engines taking a first gasp of sweet fuel and oxygen. For the first moment she was in disbelief: How had the hack that had completely taken her out of commission suddenly been removed? It didn't take her long to conclude, though, that it wasn't worth looking at this second chance too closely. With her good arm and her legs restored to full mobility, she rose to her knees before springing to her feet with rocket-boosted speed.

As the heads-up display on her helmet rebooted itself, so did her earpiece.

"Fareeha? Fareeha, can you hear me?!" Athena called.

Fareeha raised a hand to her face and wiped off the drips of water with her palm. "Back online."

"Thank goodness for that." the computer stated with evident relief. "We have no time to lose, so I will explain quickly: Talon has activated an electro-magnetic pulse in the ballroom and killed all of the Omnic dignitaries."

Fareeha's speculations were shattered; Even she hadn't expected Talon to try something so atrocious.

The computer continued hastily: "Winston and I have deactivated the EMP, but the situation is still critical and everyone left inside is in mortal danger. Get in there!"

By now the full-heads-up display had returned on her helmet, the visor illuminated by multiple pieces of information. A damage report flashed brightly saying that the suit was dented but fully operational, while another informed of sedatives and hydraulic assistance measures being taken to compensate for her broken arm. All of it now was useless to Faheera, as she had only one thing on her mind. After bending down and picking up her rocket launcher, she took off for the ceiling, vivified hope surging through her veins.

As she soared up into the night sky, the storm seemed to be nearing its time of passing. Though the rain still fell in sheets and the cold wind whipped through the air, the clouds were moving off now, and in parts the moon could even be seen peeking through, a few rays of light penetrating the dark bank. It was through one of these beams that Fareeha flew through before contorting downward towards the skylight and racing through the hole in the glass. Below her in the instant that she entered the ballroom, she could see the full spectacle of the dire straits that Overwatch was in; On top of the lifeless Omnic hulks, Reaper was intent on strangling McCree with one hand, Widowmaker had Lucio laid out on the floor to be executed like an animal, and Junkrat and Roadhog were busy taking demented pleasure in Angela and Genji's perceived final moments. Only Tracer looked to be fine, her accelerator reigniting with its blue glow as she herself looked up at where Faheera was, knowing that the tide was about to turn.

In her ear, she heard Winston shouting "Lena, get ready!". Not wasting a second of time, Fareeha's dive came to a swift halt just under the roof next to a chandelier. Her wings spread wide and several panels on her suit retreated back into themselves. It was now that she shouted out across the ballroom, her military-trained voice commanding all eyes to be on her.

" _Rocket barrage incoming!_ "

No sooner had the words left her tongue when dozens of missiles shot forth, careening into the Talon enemies and their hired assets and striking the areas they stood in with explosive fire. Without any time to react, Reaper was tossed onto the floor by a fiery plume and dissipated into his mist before any more projectiles could lay waste to him. Widowmaker was similarly thrown away from her position before ducking behind a table. Junkrat and Roadhog were the only ones not to take any sort of evasive action, simply standing in the open like turkeys in the rain as they caught the full brunt of the barrage.

While the attackers were pummeled by Faheera's wrath, Tracer put her extended lease on life to extremely good use, zipping around the ballroom just ahead of the incoming fire and blinking out with her friends in hand. McCree, Genji, and Angela were all brought to a corner near the remains of the stage while Lucio was brought to just behind it, where he speedily readied his hard-light skates and sonic amplifier before darting over to the corner.

At the same time, Junkrat picked himself off the ground, his face covered with more soot and debris than usual and his hair singed again, and whooped at Fareeha. "Good ta see ya again, Rocket Queen! If I'd known you could do _that_ I'd a' offered more o' the cash! Whaddaya think, Roady?"

Behind him, the hog was still trying to recover, having taken multiple rockets practically straight to the face.

"Oh quit being such a baby. A little of that stuff you snort up and you'll be good." the maniac whined before his face lit up. "H-Hey? Snort? Hog? Get it?!" he said before bursting into hysterical laughter at the poor excuse for a joke he'd just made.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Overwatch agents had huddled around Angela, looking upon her pale face and bloody torso with frantic worry. The trap that had shattered her leg had been blown off by the rocket barrage, but the hook remained driven through her chest, blood dripping off the tip that was sticking out of her torso and had torn a hole in her dress.

Over the earpieces, Winston could be heard. "All the critical systems are back up, but I don't see Angela's staff on here and the drones are all down. What's going on?"

"It's not good, love." Tracer replied with a somber tone. "Plan B was destroyed in the blast that took out the stage. All the Omnics are gone. Not even the EMP shutting off or the reboot did anything."

Winston didn't respond. Tracer guessed correctly from the sound of primal growling and flying papers what his reaction was.

It was Athena that next had something to say. "What about Angela herself? I am detecting that her life signs are fading quickly."

"She was hit pretty badly." Tracer rotated her head over her shoulder before turning to join the small crowd gathered around Angela. Genji, who had ripped off the bomb on his chest as soon as he had regained his strength, had her head propped up and a hand clasping one of hers, softly murmuring Japanese whispers in her ear that were had the distinctive vibrato of someone trying to keep emotion from overcoming them. McCree had his head turned over his shoulder, his eye nearest to her shut tightly, and his remaining hand behind her back grasped around the hook, while Lucio prepared to provide emergency aid.

With a swift but ginger pull, the cowboy removed the hook. Already weak from blood loss and her eyelids drooping, she barely moved, let alone made any audible sounds of pain. Before she could drift off, Lucio swiped at the air directly in front of him with one hand. The percussive beat from his amplifier turned to a soft techno melody. Around the huddle, a golden aura took shape, little glistenings of nanobiotic energy popping in and out of sight like fireflies, a recent upgrade courtesy of the person whose life it was now saving. As the glow grew brighter, those assembled saw as Angela's leg, mangled and bloody, readjusted itself, the crushed bones reattaching and the skin healing as though it had never happened. As for her abdominal wound, the blood that had been gushing forth went dry and the gnarled tissue and muscle formed back into its proper places. At the same time, the bullet hole in Lucio's arm, as well as the gash on his forehead and the various lacerations and bruises that the rest of the team had sustained were healed.

"Lucio's taking care of her though. She'll be alright." Tracer said assuredly as the DJ dimmed his healing tune and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

* * *

Meanwhile, Reaper had reappeared on the floor, reforming again out of his ominous cloud. "Sombra, what happened to the EMP?!" he barked furiously into his earpiece.

On the other end, Sombra's wit was nowhere to be found, only shock and frustration. "You tell me. One moment it's fine, the next this _pedazo de mierda_ shuts off!"

"Did the monkey hack it?"

The mere mentioning of such a notion made her indignant. "No he didn't hack me! Maybe you shouldn't have spent so much time gloating!"

"I don't care what you have to do, just shut up and get it back online NOW!"

Rather than an answer, what Reaper got was the sound of short-circuiting technology and a litany of Spanish curses. He shut off his earpiece and breathed out exasperatedly as he rotated around in a circle, seeing that Widowmaker and the Junkers were both recuperated enough to continue. He reached into his coat and pulled out two new shotguns. "Time to cut losses."

* * *

"I'm not near as good a doctor as she is, but she's on the mend." Lucio stated with cautious optimism as Angela's face began to regain some colour.

Just then, Fareeha landed next to the small crowd. "Is she alright?"

"I believe she will be. Lucio saved her, and for that I am in his debt." Genji said solemnly.

"Don't mention it, buddy." the DJ replied.

"Not to be the guy who ruins the moment, but I'm thinkin' we shouldn't hang 'round here much longer. The people outside mighta called in the real security by now and I, for one, wouldn't like to have gettin' arrested on top o' the things that went wrong tonight." McCree chimed in.

"I can evac Angela and get her to the dropship's sick bay." Fareeha said.

Tracer was quick to reply. "I'll get the ship warmed up. Meet you all there."

The group disbanded its huddle and booked it towards the outside exit. Fareeha had Angela in a fireman's lift as she took off for the skylight while Tracer blinked herself to the doorway in a split second with everyone else in tow. Before they could make their escape however, the hook that had been the centre of attention just before now wrapped around the door's handle and slammed it shut with tremendous force, and its owner had planted himself in their direction. When they went to make for the other exit, they saw that Widowmaker had shut it and was blocking their path, rifle barrel extended and ready to down the first thing that moved. Simultaneously, Fareeha was intercepted by a frag grenade lobbed from Junkrat's own launcher, just as crude and deadly as he was. A rapid landing prevented her precious cargo from being caught in the blast, and a reaction shot from her rocket launcher prevented the rat from sending more ordnance her way by forcing him to duck.

Before the team could make a break, they found themselves surrounded in the middle of the room. As well as the two gatekeepers covering their escape routes, Junkrat was standing in the direction of the control panel and Reaper had taken form directly behind them. As they closed in and tightened the circle, each of the Overwatch agents took positions: Fareeha in the very center, carrying Angela with one hand and holding her weapon in another, with Tracer, McCree, and Lucio covering them, their weapons raised as well.

Reaper chuckled darkly. "Nowhere left to run. You might as well make this quick and painless."

"Is there a reason why you didn't offer that same courtesy earlier?" Tracer said, a slightly cheeky tone serving as defiance.

"Thanks to your monkey friend in Gibraltar, I'm in a hurry. After this, I'll have to pay him another visit."

"Ooh, if we're blowin' up more Overdrongos, we get to charge more!" Junkrat butted in.

Reaper shot a glare at the madman, who immediately cowered back into line with a wide grin that begged not to be ripped off.

"It's not often I'm this generous." he continued. He turned his head and made eye contact with McCree. "I'm sure you can attest to that, ingrate."

"It's true, I can," the gunslinger answered. "but it don't mean that we're gonna surrender."

"You don't have many other options. You're out of position, you have personnel down, and if any of the six of you move another inch, we'll cut through you." His grip tightened around the triggers of his guns, as did those of his associates.

Lucio snickered as he made the time-out signature with his hands and turned towards Reaper. "Heyheyhey, now hold on a minute. I don't think you got your math right, 'cause I'm only seeing five of us here."

Reaper snarled loudly after counting up the surrounded targets himself, enraged by the fact that one of them had slipped away again. Before he could vent his anger by perforating the snarky musician with bullets, he felt cold steel cut through his torso and saw as Genji dashed into the middle of the circle in a blaze of iridescent green, short sword drawn. Pivoting on a heel, he turned towards Reaper and, holding the blade backhanded, raised it in a stance ready to strike again.

Reaper stooped over, groaning and clutching his torso as he appeared to be going down. He quickly revealed it to be a ruse, though, rising back up as the slice healed over with wisps of black mist and his groans turning into a wicked and hearty laugh. He raised his guns once more.

"Kill them all."

And bedlam ensued.


	11. Chapter 11: Ensuing Bedlam

Across every opulent inch of the ballroom, the mortal enemies struggled against each other in a high-stakes, no-prisoners slugfest. Bullets, bombs, throwing stars, and anything else thought useful in the heat of the moment were thrown with no quarter given, everyone in the room knowing that survival meant moving and shooting constantly. Each engagement was tense and instantaneous; One moment, Fareeha was dodging Roadhog's hook in order to drop Angela in a safe place back at the control panel, the next she was giving aerial suppressing fire as Tracer zipped between Widowmaker's rounds and retreated when a well-placed high kick came her way.

Lucio had dropped a sonic barrier when the first shots came out, allowing his friends to escape the initial onslaught. Seconds later, he was racing along the walls, on the roof, and on every surface he could ride with his skates, using his amplifier to shoot off sonic projectiles at targets and the percussive beats to provide a nanobiotic boost of speed to his allies, himself included as he dashed ahead of the blasts of Junkrat's grenades.

With McCree's prosthetic hand severed, he kept himself out of the direct fray, taking shots at targets of opportunity in the chaos. One shot from his revolver would be to distract the hog from shotgunning Tracer as she zipped in to pepper Reaper with pulse bullets, while the next would be at Junkrat as he tackled the cowboy to the ground, cackling with a bear-trap in hand and holding it so that squeezing the pressure trigger would open and close the metal jaws.

At the eye of the storm, Genji and Reaper were duking it out, one-on-one. The cyborg ninja would start his assault by dashing around his foe at a distance, throwing ninja stars to soften him up and waste the return shots by deflecting them with his short sword before charging in with blades, kicks, throws, and punches. Reaper all the while would react and counter, using fancy footwork, gunwork, and his powers to avoid and tank hits before dropping his current pair of shotguns, producing a new pair from what seemed to be an endless supply under his overcoat, and forcing Genji to fall back amid a flurry of shots and try his attack again from a different angle.

From above and inbetween dodges of hooks and sniper shots, Fareeha called out over the comms. Her voice was cool and commanding, no different than any of the missions during the days of the army or Helix. "All points, Genji's at a standstill against Reyes. Lucio, McCree, go provide assistance."

"I'm a little busy right now!" McCree shouted back as his good hand pushed against Junkrat's face, trying to keep the cackling lunatic's trap from decapitating him.

"It's alright, I got this." Lucio replied confidently. With the swipe of his hand, the beat grew louder and he zoomed in towards the point with uncanny speed. He leapt off the wall and, using a pillar as a boost pad, landed on the ground just behind Reaper before sliding along and taking the spectral villain's legs out from underneath him. With an opening created, Genji dashed in and brought his blade down, only to swipe at intangible black clouds as Reaper rose like a wraith, the mist swirled around his lower body and his guns blazing away at the ninja and the DJ, who both headed for cover with several acrobatic leaps and twists.

As Reaper touched back down and dropped his empty weapons, he was met with a shoulder charge from Faheera that knocked him down, setting him up for Tracer to blink in and shoot off her pulse pistols at him before he could dissipate away. Like before though, it all had no lasting effect as he dissolved into his cloud and whooshed towards Tracer, momentarily forming to level volleys before fading away, following her to her next blink point, and repeating.

Using his cybernetic strength, Genji leaped directly upward onto a chandelier, from which he bounded forth and tackled Reaper to the ground while he was formed and ready to gun down Tracer. As the cyborg and the revenant's to-and-fro cycle began anew, Widowmaker bore witness to it while hunkered behind a pillar in a firefight with Faheera.

She spoke briefly and authoritatively into her earpiece. "Keep the agents off of Reaper. Do it and I will see that your pay is tripled."

No sooner had she said that when shots from Roadhog's scrap gun thundered across the room, scattering Lucio and Tracer to parallel pillars. Their relative safety was ripped away when the hook sliced cleanly through the solid marble inches above their heads. As the two of them ran for new positions, weapons laying down as much return fire as they could muster, they could see the hog swinging the chain of his hook above his head like a helicopter blade, scything through anything within its radius. The agents had no time to formulate an attack or even be shocked by the sight, not before the murderous pig had proceeded to spin his infernal weapon in a figure-eight pattern in front of him, forcing them to further retreat as the hook bisected tables and carved giant gashes in the wooden floor.

His attention attracted by the sounds of splintering wood and guttural roars, McCree saw what the hog was doing and knew he had to intervene, but first he had to force the pig's maniacal partner-in-crime off, especially since his own strength was beginning to give out and the trap that the lunatic wielded like the jaws of a crocodile was now plucking hairs off the cowboy's beard. Craning his head backwards to buy a precious few extra inches, he caught a glimpse of his torn-off mechanical hand lying on the floor a foot or so behind him, unused flashbang still clutched in its grip.

An idea came to him in that exact second. With a last-ditch blow, he landed a cross on the Junker's face with his mechanical stub, the exposed live wires sending high-voltage currents jolting through the psychopath and knocking him onto his rear. McCree then wasted no time peeling the stun grenade out of his dead metal hand and tossing it at his adversary, who was blinded by the flash for long enough that the gunslinger could draw a bead on him.

Junkrat would have been ended right then and there had a sniper shot from Widowmaker not sent a chandelier plummeting down on their heads. Instead, the extension on life bought by McCree's distraction allowed him to get clear just before the ceiling decoration shattered on the ground and sent shards of glass flying. He offered a demented thumbs-up to Widowmaker as he leaped to his feet, but she took no notice as she dueled with McCree, who had also escaped the falling fixture in time. Looking back at Roadhog, he had finally managed to snag Fareeha out of the air and even with her boosters at full power, he reeled her in like a persistent fisherman having caught its elusive prize. Before the killer pig could gut her with a scrap gun shot, the chain was snapped by a shot from McCree, whose focus was freed up after Lucio had bolted in to distract the assassin.

With his accomplice's most devastating weapon now destroyed and Fareeha laying salvos of rockets at Reaper, even Junkrat himself could tell that his payday was in jeopardy, a frightful notion that prompted immediate and insane action. Placing on the floor a mine identical to the one he'd used on Tracer earlier on and readying a detonator in one hand, he stepped on the explosive device and did the can-can while singing loudly and off-key:

 **I don't know the lyrics to**

 **This incredibly catchy tune**

 **But I know it's often used**

 **When everything must go KABOOM!**

On the last word, he pressed the detonator, sending himself rocketing skyward at the armoured woman, the wings of whom he grabbed on to and refused to let go as she twisted and turned violently in midair to shake him off. Tracer blinked in to attempt to pry him off, but was repelled by more balls of scrap pieces blasted her way by Roadhog. The skinny Junker eventually did let go, but not before sticking a bomb to the mechanized wings that blew them to smithereens and sent Fareeha spiraling to the ground, skidding along until she was at the hog's feet.

He raised a steel-toed boot and brought it down upon her with brute force, which she countered with a grab and a hard push that threw him off balance. She reached for her rocket launcher as she stood back up, leveling it just as the hog drew his gun. Their shots were identical; Both triggers were pulled at the exact same moment and both projectiles knocked their enemies' weapon out of their hand. Fareeha wiped a line of blood from the side of her mouth and took a boxing stance while the hog rushed in, his hands clenched together over his head to club her down. When she caught them, the two struggled in a test of power and force of will.

The two stared each other down like they had before, their game faces again obscured by their masks.

"Welcome to the world of pain!" Roadhog bellowed.

Fareeha responded with as much focused anger as what her opponent had. "Can I offer you the specialty?"

At that moment, she delivered a hard kick to his groin, prompting a yowl as he clutched the affected area. Her crippling move was backed up by a heavy jab to his massive gut and a right hook that sent him on his back, down for the count. As she winced and clutched her right arm tenderly, she heard Junkrat's crazy screams and peg-legged running as he charged her down, frag grenades raining down upon her. She first went for a leap into the air before she remembered that the pieces of her wings were scattered across the room and instead dove for one of the few tables still standing. When the rat leapt onto the piece of cover and leaned over to fire a bomb at her point-blank, she swiftly disarmed him with a left hook and judo-threw him into the bulk of his compadre. Having finally beaten the two most annoying excuses for human beings she'd ever had the displeasure of knowing, she strode over and regarded them with triumph.

"Do you still think I'm an oversized canary?" she rhetorically posed to the rat just before he lost consciousness.

Across the ballroom, the tide was turning in favour of Overwatch. Widowmaker had anticipated one of Tracer's blinks and swept her legs out, but McCree had gotten sweet retribution by dropping a chandelier on the assassin, who was forced to take cover behind a pillar as the Brit and the cowboy pinned her down. In the center of the fray, Lucio and Genji's double-team of Reaper was producing results, forcing him to spend far more time in his mist form than able to shoot back. With their attacks coming from all sides, the revenant was being forced to employ more technical maneuvers in order to keep them off of him.

Placing himself in the middle of the skirmish, he spun and dodged, ducked and weaved, and utilized over-the-shoulder, behind-the back, and blind shots in motions akin to a dance, techniques he'd invented and perfected during the Crisis and the Golden Age. His initial counterattack was successful in putting Genji on the defensive and making Lucio peel off a run, but it was cut short when Faheera proceeded to lob rockets at him, throwing him off balance and wide open to the efforts of the ninja and the DJ.

Still, even with cutting losses proving to be much harder than he'd expected, he had one last trick up his sleeve. Before Genji could dash in again, the entire ballroom was blanketed by a pitch-black cloud that originated from the revenant. Almost unable to see past their own eyes, the team barely had time to find a piece of concealment before a hurricane of hellfire was sent out in every direction.

McCree, Tracer, and Widowmaker were nearby the pillars and dove behind them immediately. Lucio used a well-timed boost of speed to get himself and Genji out of the line of fire as well, but not before each receiving glancing blows, one of which seized up the cyborg's left wrist and forced him to drop his deflecting sword. Fareeha had only just enough time to get to a pillar before her armour was cut to ribbons; By the time she reached relative safety, her helmet had been split in half, her chestplate was pockmarked with bullets and crackling as it gradually drained power, and her side and left shoulder were leaking blood as she applied pressure to them.

"Anyone here know he could do that?" Lucio shouted out over the din of the whizzing bullets and roaring guns.

"I coulda told you." McCree replied with slight sardonism.

Fareeha's response was inquisitive and critical. "Didn't you read over the briefing last night, Lucio?"

"Ok, ok, I'll have a look at it when we get back."

"We aren't going to be getting back if we don't take Reyes out." Tracer chimed in.

McCree looked at her with an expression that made it clear he didn't like her stating the obvious. "You got any ideas, missy?"

It only took a few seconds before Tracer's face lit up. "As a matter of fact, I think I do."

She had barely finished speaking when she blinked off into the fray and made a beeline for Reaper, erratically zipping across the room faster than the eye could follow. As she closed in, she could make out the pale white of Reaper's mask, a solitary piece of colour as he whirled like a dervish in the center of the mist, shotguns discharging ordnance at breakneck speed. Her eyes narrowed as she readied to zoom in and jump him, but her intention was stopped in its tracks by a shrill warning siren from her accelerator.

Tracer looked down at the device and saw in slow motion that a red and black bullet, one of the countless terrible hellfire shells being loosed, was about to enter the chestpiece. Before it could penetrate the plastic exterior though, she blinked rapidly out of its way. She refocused on Reaper only to see that another bullet was about to hit her, and this one had already cracked through her goggles and was going to go right between her eyes. After a slo-mo surveying of the immediate environment showed nothing but more bullets wherever she went, she rewound herself back to the starting point.

"Scratch that. Anyone else got an idea?" she said, slightly dejected.

"I coulda told you." McCree added before Faheera glared him into silence.

The team was silent for some time after that, their thoughts drowned out in their own heads by the sounds of bullets burying deep into solid marble, splintering wood, and shattering centuries-old gold and glass. As if that wasn't enough of a stark reminder of the trouble they were in, Athena's arrival over the comms only served to affirm it.

"All points, this is Athena. I have just received word that the gendarmes and GIGN are on their way to the palace. They know that Overwatch has a presence and are prepared as such. ETA is seven minutes and counting."

At the same time, Widowmaker received a similar message over her earpiece before affirming it. Tracer and McCree both took notice of this. "If we're going to do something, we need to do it now!" the former called out to her friends.

Genji was the one to speak up. "I believe I know what to do." he said with uncanny calm.

Lucio cocked his head sideways and regarded him skeptically. "Um, you sure about that, 'cause I haven't seen anything that's tellin' me this guy can go down right now."

"Trust me. If you can help me get in close enough, I can beat him." He placed his working hand on the hilt of his katana, still sheathed and waiting to be released.

Fareeha again assumed command. "We're out of time so we'll roll with it. Lucio, you provide the distraction. Tracer, McCree, make sure Widowmaker doesn't escape. I'll cover the Junkers. GO!"

The team broke cover again, with Lucio skating unto the breach at high speed. Within the bank of shadowy clouds, Reaper could be just made out, and his attention was focused on the DJ's mad dash. Tracer and McCree exchanged confirming nods and readied for their opening to be provided. Most critically of all, meanwhile, Genji burst out and tore for the center of the black swirling storm. As he reached striking distance, his hand wrapped around the hilt of his katana and gripped it tightly. With a sonorous cry of:

" _Ryūjin no ken wo kurae!_ "

it was unleashed. The sound of metal sliding across metal rang out. Reaper turned to check the source of the noise, only to see that Genji had leapt into the air, sword held above his head and a massive green dragon following the blade's tip as it was guided to its target. The sword and the dragon found its mark in a single, furious swing and the misty bank exploded outwards before dissipating into nothing, ending the deadly tempest.

With the main source of danger removed for now, Tracer and McCree sprung into action. Seeing that Widowmaker was about to break for one of the exits, Tracer reached into the back piece of the accelerator and produced a disc-shaped contraption, a pulse bomb that beeped in readiness as its owner threw it like a Frisbee. Though the assassin saw the weapon coming and slid on her knees to avoid it, she neither saw nor anticipated the gunslinger landing a crack shot on the bomb, detonating it early and sending Widowmaker tumbling back before coming to a hard stop against the wall and sinking down to the ground, disoriented and disarmed as her enemies held her at gunpoint.

Concurrently, Junkrat and Roadhog had finally awakened from their coma, miraculously having not been hit by a single shot despite being in the open.

"E-extra Vegemite on those waffles..." Junkrat trailed off as his head bobbed and weaved and his pupils dilated. He was finally brought back to what little sense he had by a sucker punch from Roadhog, who then immediately pointed out that, like Widowmaker, they too were being held at gunpoint, Lucio brandishing his amplifier and Fareeha armed with a wrist-mounted missile.

As the last remnants of the mist floated away, Genji stood victorious, sword glowing emerald green as he held it to the side. When Reaper took form, he dropped first to his knees, then to the floor, catching himself with his forearms.

"I forgot you could do that." he wheezed softly.

Genji was focused and firm in his words and actions. "The Spirit Dragons of the Shimada clan are not bound by the physical plane. They reach into one's soul and strike from within. If it lives, it can be killed. It seems even you, Gabriel Reyes, have some life left in you."

"Yeah," he sputtered. "I'm going to have to have that looked into. It's worth mentioning though, that even with your fancy gimmick, you still didn't kill me."

"That is because I offer you now a choice." The cyborg placed the edge of the blade under Reaper's mask at the chin, forcing him to rise to his knees. "You may yield and be given a fair trial for your crimes against the world. If you do not accept, justice for Angela and the peace she worked for, that you destroyed, will be delivered on this floor, here and now."

Reaper chuckled grimly at the proposition. "Some choices you're giving."

"It is not often I am this generous. I am sure you can attest to that, monster."

"It's true, I can. But that doesn't mean I'm going to surrender." He secretly reached for a button on his gauntlet and pressed it. At the same time, the earpieces of his wicked associates sharply whined with two cricket-like clicks, a signal for what was to come.

Genji raised his katana again. "Then, you have decided your fate. I hope that you find peace."

As he brought it down, Reaper vanished, teleporting away and leaving only puffs of his black smoke behind. Before Genji could reel in his swing, his missing enemy appeared directly behind him and dug his clawed fingers into the cyborg's right elbow, ripping at the cybernetic joints and forcing him to drop the sword and scream in agony. At the same time, Widowmaker reached into her jacket and tossed out a small, gas-filled item at Tracer, who blinked to the other end of the room and threw it out a window as she recognized it as the same sort of device that had been used against her in King's Row. The distraction was enough for the assassin to jump up and wrap her legs around McCree's neck in a chokehold. Also at the same time, Junkrat pulled a cord on his bomb harness that dropped every explosive attached to it while Roadhog reached for his scrap gun and, upon producing a feeding mechanism and a hand crank and attaching them both to the firearm, rigged it into a veritable Gatling gun. The combination of the two strategies left Lucio and Fareeha scrambling for cover.

Before Widowmaker's stranglehold could grow fatally tight, her grip was loosened as two shots from McCree's revolver ripped through her thigh and she dropped to the ground. She tried to stand, but her leg gave out and sent her down to one knee. With the cowboy still gasping for air, she purred into her earpiece. "We need to leave."

"I agree." Reaper replied as he relinquished his vicious torture and formed into another cloud, extending a hand to grab Widowmaker and bring her into his mist as so to shield her from fire as they retreated through the broken skylight. The Junkers, meanwhile, enacted their own plans for escape. With an ear-piercing whistle from the skinny psycho, a yellow-painted and heavily dented chopper motorcycle crashed through the outside door, nearly running over Tracer as she tried to pursue the Talon agents, and skidded in just where its owners were. With the rat cackling as he crawled into the sidecar and the hog at the handlebars, they took off back for the exit they came in. Unlike their allies though, their escape was intervened as Fareeha loosed her wrist-mounted missile, which threw the bike into the air upon impact and into a million pieces as it crushed itself against the wall next to the door.

As Junkrat crawled out from the smouldering wreckage, he saw Faheera walking up to him, her eyes steely and her face scowling.

"That's it, you are _totally_ not gettin' any of my money." he moaned.

Fareeha picked him up by the hair and looked him in the eye. "Neither are you."

"Well..., shit."

With that, Fareeha landed one last punch and knocked him out again.

It was over. After what had felt like a lifetime, it had finally ended. The team let out a collective sigh of relief as the luxury of slowing down, collecting their thoughts, and licking their wounds could finally be afforded. The group, even though victorious, was in a sorry state: Fareeha's armour had been almost completely trashed, Genji's metal exoskeleton, on top of both his arms being disabled, was similarly pockmarked and scratched, and everyone else was covered in scrapes, abrasions, and minor lacerations. Amid the ruins of the ballroom, each of them found a spot to sit down and take a breather, be it next to one of the bullet-riddled tables surrounded by the haunting shells of lifeless Omnics or somewhere near the cracked and smouldering remains of the stage. Each of the agents took this precious time to let their heartbeats drop and their adrenaline lessen, a few of them also shutting their eyes to try to find blissful rest.

After a couple minutes, McCree was the first one to start talking again. "I think it might be best we get a move-on now. The French cops'll be here any minute now and I'm figurin' it'll be real bad if we're still around when they arrive."

Everyone made silent confirmation as they helped themselves and each other back to their feet and staggered towards the outdoor exit. As Faheera picked up Angela from the control panel, which had through pure coincidence been the only thing left intact during the battle, and walked laboriously to the door, she looked towards Tracer, who was sitting in the middle of the floor fiddling with the remains of a camera drone.

"You'd better get to the ship and warm it up." she said. "We'll need to make a quick getaway."

Tracer got up off the ground, still playing with the machine. "Just give me a moment." A second later, she had cast it away and was walking alongside Fareeha. "I think your weather call might have been a bit early, love."

Fareeha looked at Tracer quizzically before seeing that her friend was looking up at the open skylight. Above them, the rainstorm had finally passed, the thick clouds and the chilly breeze that they rode on having finally let up their torrent. Though the clouds still masked the stars, they had thinned to the point where the moonlight shone down clearly, giving that which was under it a shimmering glow once again.

Fareeha chuckled lightly. "Well, the only thing predictable about the weather is that it's unpredictable. Dad always said that you learn to take it as it comes, no matter what."

Tracer let those words linger for a moment before her expression turned sad. "Do you think we won tonight?"

Fareeha was caught off guard and regarded her friend in such a manner.

"I mean, even though we couldn't save everyone, we caught at least some of the bad guys, and they can rebuild the peace talks, right? The world will know that Talon was responsible and we tried to stop them."

Fareeha's answer was slow and somber. "I'm not sure. Something tells me that everyone's going to point fingers at each other, and that that was Talon's plan all along."

"You might be right, but I guess what I'm asking is do you think that they can rebuild from this, that Angela and the like that still believe can make it happen again?"

Fareeha pondered the question as she walked. She looked over her shoulder at Angela, still unconscious, seeing her hair dangling and her expressionless face.

"Yes." she answered as they walked through the door. "I think so."

As Tracer blinked off for the jet and Fareeha continued to safety, neither of them, nor anyone else, saw Angela toss her head around weakly, or inaudibly mouth out " _no_ " as her eyes tightened in fright.


	12. Chapter 12: Time and Hope

The Parisian authorities arrived just after Overwatch had taken off. Paramilitary troops had stormed the gates of the palace and broken down the doors to find the destruction that had been wrought only a few minutes before. The ballroom was immediately cordoned off and a crime scene was set up, forensics experts combing over every singed, bullet-filled, and obliterated piece of debris. Junkrat and Roadhog had been carted off in a paddywagon as the prime suspects, the former yammering about who was going to get the bounty that had been on their heads while the latter shook his head in disbelief. Any evidence of Talon having any involvement was nowhere to be found.

Camera crews had also arrived and they clamored over what the police didn't immediately redact or deem classified. The camera drones, or rather what was left of them, were one such thing that the media was able to get its hands on, and it was barely a half hour after the tragedy had transpired that practically every news outlet on the planet was covering the story, showing every second of footage from the grand arrivals to the dignitaries recoiling in fear as Tracer tackled down Widowmaker, accompanied by such gruesome headlines as:

 _REST IN PIECES: OMNICS AT GALA SHREDDED BY VICIOUS ATTACK-_

 _OVERWATCH SUSPECTED INVOLVED IN GRISLY MURDERS: A MARKED TURN FOR THE WORSE, EXPERTS SAY-_

 _MECHANICAL MASSACRE AT VERSAILLES: WORK OF LONE WOLVES OR A LARGER CONPSIRACY?_

Accompanying these headlines, in stark journalistic contrast to the talking heads that had broadcasted the joyous announcement of the gala and its culmination of peace, greasy-haired personalities and gaudy pundits shouted in sensationalized tones and pointed fingers over everything.

" _I, for one, don't like to think about little things like that; All I need to know is that the Omnics are dead and this whole peace thing, that was never going to work by the way, is behind us-"_

 _"Of course you'd say that you don't like to think about it; That's because the only thing to think about here is that the humans hired those Australian killers, and probably Overwatch as well, to sabotage the righteous rise of the Omnic to the same level as the high-and-mighty organic-"_

 _"The crooks known as Junkrat and Roadhog are the focus of attention here without a doubt, but lemme ask you; should they really be? I mean, we've got suspected Overwatch associates on the guest list, even showrunning on that night, and footage of a confirmed member of their little cabal tackling an innocent guest to the ground right before the footage cuts out. You ask me, that looks more than a little suspicious-"_

 _"I know this may sound shocking, but for once I agree with Null Sector. The humans only want to see us trampled under their feet, and I, for one, am not going to stand for it._

Tossing the banana in his hand aside, Winston shook his head as a disgusted grimace drew across his face as he shut off the endless debates and grotesque photos. It had been over a day since the tragedy had happened, since the plans that he'd formulated had gone so horribly wrong and nearly gotten his friends killed, since they had limped out of the ship as it landed, alive but bloodied and battered. As the stories on the computer screen faded away, he looked up at his line of pictures again, his attention turning to a group photo of the reformed Overwatch. In the dark lighting of the control room, the shadows that the lights in the rest of the base cast laid out at odd angles, one in particular casting over the half of the group photo that included Tracer, McCree, Faheera, Genji, and Lucio, with the gorilla himself wrapping his arm around them all as they smiled for the camera.

Next to the photo was the ever-present picture of the infant Winston and his namesake, the doctor that had raised him. Where as reminiscing upon the wise words of his father had brought happiness and resolve before, though, now it only brought regret. Winston reached up at the picture and grasped the bottom corner of it.

"I failed you." he whispered, fighting back tears. He again looked at the group photo and the friends covered by the dark shroud. "All of you. I'm so sorry."

His sorrow was interrupted by a British-accented voice, peppy but compassionate. "What've you got to apologize for?"

Winston rotated around in his tire chair to see Tracer standing a few feet behind him. She was wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt with a pink heart on the chest and a pair of sweatpants, and there were several adhesive bandages and gauze strips across her cheeks, forehead, and arms.

The look he gave her suggested though he was always glad to see her, he didn't think it a good time right now. "Why are you here? Concussion protocol's in affect; I told Athena to make sure you all got some rest."

Tracer smiled. "Everyone's out of sick bay. Jesse decided he was going to light up inside the building, saying that-" She put on a comedically bad southern drawl. "'Ah didn't git mah five minutes then, but ah'm shure as hell gonna git 'um now.'"

Her attempt at emulating the gunslinger's voice prompted chuckles from both her and Winston. "We tried to kick him out, but he said he couldn't wait any longer. Athena kept us from forcibly throwing him out the door by letting us all go take a walk and stretch our legs after being cooped up for a day." she explained. "Everyone else is doing OK. Lucio, I think, is trying to come up with a new song and Fareeha said she needed to make a phone call back to Egypt."

Winston smiled back, but it dimmed quickly. "How's Angela?"

"She's doing good. Still out cold in bed, but on the mend. We've all given some towards it; Genji was first in line after Athena told him his blood type was compatible."

The gorilla's head drooped down so that he was looking at the ground. "Well, at least she's still alive."

Tracer caught on to what her friend was feeling and took a seat on the edge of his tire, placing her hand on his back to comfort him and speaking in a tender whisper. "Hey, big guy. It's not your fault. None of us caught on 'til it was too late."

Winston craned his head up slowly, but he didn't look her in the eye. "Yes it is. None of you did anything wrong. You and Jesse were being smart and seeing that we needed to act, while I was being a stubborn, short-sighted idiot."

Tracer rubbed her hand up and down his back, scratching at the fur underneath the carbon fiber and stretchy polymer of the space suit he wore. "Don't put yourself down like that. You did good and you don't deserve what you're saying. Honestly, I should be apologizing for being testy."

"Don't I?" His shoulders raised and his chest puffed out. "I didn't do what needed to be done, I left gaping holes in our plan that nearly got the team killed, and because of me, the world is at each other's throats again and we're all sitting around powerless to do anything about it!" He gritted his teeth and raised his fists above his head over the computer. Tracer could see under his glasses a spark of lightning race across his pupils before it disappeared and he dropped his posture again.

"Shh, it's OK." she reassured, patting him on the back and scratching him on the head.

He sighed heavily as he picked up her hand and moved it elsewhere. "When I started Overwatch back up, I thought we were going to learn from the mistakes we made back then. I wanted to be able to save lives without all the procedures and red tape again. But after last night, it's clear that all I've done is make everything worse. The rest of you are amazing, but I'm not being the leader we need."

"You're not the only one who's angry at themselves over mistakes at the palace. I've been kicking myself over not nabbing Widow when I first spotted her, Jesse's been grumbling over getting jumped by those Blackwatch goons,"

"-And you'd both have nothing to complain about if I hadn't been so _stupid!_ " He raised a fist and punched himself in self-loathing until he tucked his head inbetween his shoulders and massaged a migraine he'd given himself.

Tracer regarded her friend worryingly, trying to decide what to say next. She'd never seen Winston, who was usually as much of an optimist as she was, this down. She tried to look him in the eye, but his head was stooped over too far. As she looked back up and patted him on the back again, she saw one of the pictures on the wall.

"You know Winston, one time I heard someone say-"

"If you're going to quote Dr. Harold to me, you're wasting your time. Athena already tried." he blurted out.

"Hold your horses, love. Hear me out." She placed her hand under his chin and raised his head so that they were looking at each other in the eye.

She spoke slowly and with empathy. "When I graduated the field training program, a good friend told me, 'Lena, congratulations. You've got spirit, but you should know that out there, in the field, it's not all fortune and glory. There will be times when you'll lose, when you'll make choices that will get you into trouble, when something will go wrong and you'll hate yourself for overlooking some small detail. It's then that you need to be able to recognize what happened, dust yourself off, and most importantly, learn from your mistakes. That's how we grow as living beings, and that's how we'll make the world a better place.'"

Winston scowled. "Who said that?" he asked, certain he knew the answer.

Tracer plucked a picture off of the headboard and held it in front of the gorilla's face. In the image was the two of them shaking hands and holding diplomas.

"You did." she whispered.

Surprised by what was far from the answer he expected, he slowly took the picture out of her hand and studied it carefully. He remembered that day well; He had just graduated field training himself when she entered field training, but he had yet to finish his entrance exams to Overwatch's science division. Despite the differences, they quickly struck up a friendship, promising they'd do everything they could to help each other pass. Working in tandem and putting more than their fair share of long hours, they both did so with flying colours. At the ceremony, the same ceremony where Winston's photo of the core team of the Golden Age had been taken, they gave introductory speeches for each other as they accepted their accolades.

Tracer continued. "It looks bad now, but last I checked the world's still turning and we're all still breathing; We've got time and we've got hope. Of course you can't do anything if you're just sitting here all alone. We'll go over what went bad together, figure out how to fix it together, and we'll make sure that next time Talon makes a big move, we'll be ready. Together."

Winston held the picture up to the headboard and reattached it with a thumbtack before looking back at Tracer. "We've got time, and we've got hope." he softly whispered as he interlocked his arm with Tracer's. He stared straight at her and spoke with resolve. "Never accept the world as it appears to be. Dare to see it for what it could be."

Tracer smirked. "I thought you said quoting Dr. Harold was a waste of time."

"Well, it just sounds better when it comes from me."

The two of them shared a laugh before Tracer suddenly winced in pain and clutched her forehead. Winston wrapped an arm around her as he picked her up off the tire chair and guided her out of the control room.

"First thing's first though, you still need to recuperate. Jesse's smoking habits or not, concussion protocol is in affect. You need rest. Afterwards, we'll get to work, fix what we did wrong. Deal?"

Tracer grinned resolutely. "Deal. We'll make your dad proud yet."

"He always was. This will make him even more."

Just as they were about to walk out, comrades in arms united to the end, Tracer spoke up again. "Oh, just one last thing big guy."

"What is it?"

"Do you remember back about eight years ago when you couldn't find that one jar of peanut butter and you turned Geneva upside down looking for it?"

Winston looked at her perplexed. "Yeah. I still don't know where it went. Why?"

Tracer rolled her eyes and laughed sheepishly. "Um, well, about that..."

 _THE END_


End file.
